Ten Deep 07.16.09: Top 10 Siege Movies

Posted by Owain J. Brimfield on 07.16.2009

Barricade the windows, lock yourself in the panic room and switch on the CCTV, as Owain J. Brimfield takes a look at the top ten siege movies!



Welcome to week 39 of 'Ten Deep'! We're settling in nicely to the new groove around here four weeks into the job, and thanks for all the positive feedback so far, as well as the trollish half-baked comments that never fail to elicit a chuckle. Let's kick things off with a look back at last week's top ten debut performances, with some:

Reactions and interactions

Firstly, the question on everyone's lips - Leon? Wasn't that movie called The Professional? Thankfully, the answer was on just as many people's lips. Leon is the film's actual title, it was simply renamed for the American market. Being a British writer, this column is going to experience some Brit bias from time to time - I would apologize, but the 411 Powers That Be already have me making concessions to the US readership by spelling words like "apologise" incorrectly on purpose. Incidentally, that fact also explains why 'Ten Deep' needs such extensive dental work and regularly consumes its own body weight in tea.

On to the usual bevy of suggestions for other inclusions. Tatum O'Neal was, I think, the obvious exclusion from last week's list, as highlighted by Trev and DaHumorist, but she fell victim to the golden rule by appearing in a film I've not seen, as did Anna Paquin in The Piano. I think going forward I'm going to start highlighting weekly exclusions due to said golden rule, so I don't seem quite so clueless. By all accounts these two performances would likely make the list though. As for the others:

Timothy Hutton in Ordinary People - a strong debut to be sure, but I've probably subconsciously omitted him due to my dislike of his director in that film, leathery ginger midget Robert Redford.
James Dean in East of Eden - made the shortlist, although I've never been as satisfied with Dean's roles as most others so he wound up not making the final cut. I'd listen to an argument for his inclusion, though.
Johnny Depp in A Nightmare on Elm Street - why not Kevin Bacon in Animal House for that matter? Because those two performances were essentially inauspicious in terms of those two men's careers.
Brad Renfro in The Client - a good point actually. I thought about Renfro but didn't even consider him for the shortlist, but looking back on it, it was actually a pretty smart debut. Certainly enough to have made the honorable mentions, at any rate. Incidentally, check out his performance in the underrated Bully if you haven't seen it.
Kirstie Alley in Star Trek II - lol.

As for the misconceptions - Jodie Foster's cinematic debut was Napoleon and Samantha, not Taxi Driver (shame on a certain nameless fellow 411 writer who suggested her). Christian Bale's was Mio in the Land of Faraway, not Empire of the Sun. And Salma Hayek's was Miracle Alley, not Desperado. Just the facts, ma'am.

A number of commenters, including C. Drama and SeatsPro, contended that Chloe Sevigny is more widely known these days for her role in Big Love then for fellating Vincent Gallo. Well, my market research on Sevigny extended to asking two people about her and they both mentioned The Brown Bunny, but I'll admit that doesn't exactly make for extensive polling on the subject, so I'll happily concede that point.

Edward Furlong seemed to be the entrant most people had a problem with. Well, I'm all about the controversy (okay, not "all about", but definitely "partially enamored with"), and since no one took the time to actually argue their case, I'll stand by my assertion that despite the fact his performance doesn't live up to some other child actors' early roles, he was still a perfect fit for the role of John Connor, and what remained of his later career was forever indebted to that performance.

Joseph Lee, by the way, is definitely the only one who remembers Brainscan, and with good reason.

A question of semantics from Guest#7450 - how is Robert Duvall's career the longest to trace back to his debut when Orson Welles' first performance predates it? Simply enough, because Duvall has more acting credits beside his name than Welles, as Nick pointed out.

Finally, stephen has some kind words, enjoying the column because I don't care about other people's take on my opinion (to paraphrase). I certainly appreciate the sentiment, but it's not entirely accurate - I just don't care about other people's take on my opinion when they disagree with me but aren't able to formulate any sort of discussion or rationalization for their counterpoint. Come armed with some points for debate and by all means I'll consider your point of view; for me the facility to stimulate such debate is one of the main attractions of this column.

Anyhow, this week we're taking a look at the top ten siege movies. Siege-type scenarios have always been a favorite of mine, allowing for a relatively simple setup and a constantly effective means of ratcheting up the tension. The criteria for inclusion on this list was much more tricky for me to work out than usual. A siege for these purposes consists of a small group of protagonist characters trying to defend a fixed point against a horde of antagonists. Funnily enough, that definition pretty much omits The Siege itself, along with Panic Room. I initially decided against including movies depicting sieges from non-humans, but eventually relented on that (with a caveat, which you'll discover later on in the column). I also wanted to focus on films where the siege was the primary narrative point, which excluded (amongst others) Straw Dogs, 300, El Cid, The Omega Man and The Two Towers. Also out were those scenarios where there's a lone hero on the loose in the midst of a terrorist operation, trying to take it down from the inside - bye bye Die Hard and co. So with all these considerations in mind, and the hope that thinking too hard about this hasn't pushed an obvious choice out of my mind, read on and enjoy!

As always, there's one golden rule: if I haven't seen it, it's not allowed on the list.

This week's golden rule notable omissions: Dog Day Afternoon; Downfall; Rio Bravo





Honorable mention: Inside Man

Bank robber style sieging - with a twist! Or three.

Honorable mention: Dawn of the Dead

Zack Snyder's remake only misses out on the main list due to the inclusion of the Romero original below.

10. Hostage

A stylish twist compared to the other entrants on the list, as Hostage features three adolescent would-be burglars under siege from Bruce Willis and an army of cops, as the only film this week to feature the baddies holding the fort against the goodies. Teenage brothers Dennis and Kevin (with names like those, you can tell they aren't exactly going to be entered in the bad-assery hall of fame) and their sociopathic accomplice Mars (now that's more like it), fresh from a carjacking, decide to bust into Kevin Pollak's palatial mansion in the Californian suburbs with the malicious intent of ridding the man of his worldly possessions. One bungled robbery later, the lads find themselves with a half-dead cop lying on the doorstep, Pollak's family held hostage and Bruce Willis, master hostage negotiator, preparing to lay siege to the heavily-fortified homestead (Pollak, of course, being a mafia accountant of some repute). Adding into the bargain the fact that Willis' family is themselves being held hostage by the shadowy mafioso behind Pollak's operations, and good ol' Bruce has some extra impetus behind his desire to break into the pad and perform his usual acts of heroics, so he can escape with his family intact. Oh, and if that weren't enough motivation, Pollak has a young son who ever-so conveniently reminds Brucie of the kid who was inadvertently dispatched during his last failed negotiation.

The stakes are high indeed, and even if the film does suffer for having Pollak's character incapacitated for the majority of its running time, leaving us instead rooting for his young kids (the daughter is the usual wet blanket you find in movies like this, but the little boy at least is pretty endearing), it retains a healthy amount of tension due to two primary ingredients. First is Bruce himself, always the everymancop caught up in deadly situations, but possessing an innate ability to make every increasingly ridiculous situation seem surprisingly real, a gift that serves the man well in the majority of his films (he even manages to take The Fifth Element seriously, which is some talent). Although the stakes for Bruce are laid on rather too thickly, there's no doubt we want to see him succeed. Secondly, Ben Foster's terrifying Mars does the work of three antagonists, quickly establishing himself as the lead villain over his uninteresting compatriots. Not one to shirk from smashing a Molotov cocktail directly in a SWAT team member's face, Mars is a surprisingly brutal nemesis in the sort of role in which you'd normally expect to see a generic action baddie. The three-way climax to the siege, although coming a bit before the film's close, is pretty tense, and even though we know Bruce is likely to win the day it's still entertaining to watch him in action.

9. The Nest

Or Wasp's Nest to use the film's slightly more evocative original French title. Directed, conveniently enough, by Florent Emilio Siri in his precursor to the abovementioned Hostage - clearly a man who enjoys his siege scenarios just as much as I do - The Nest is something of a French-language version of Assault on Precinct 13, with a crimelord being held prisoner in a deserted locale and a handful of beleaguered authorities desperately trying to fend off an onslaught of mercenaries to make it to daybreak. In fact, there's little reason to watch the 2005 AP13 remake when this film does the original better justice, and features significantly fewer gratuitous close-ups of corpses with a single bullet hole in their foreheads. Samy Naceri (he of Taxi fame and jailhouse notoriety) is perhaps the face most recognizable to western audiences in this flick, as the leader of a group of crims out to rob an electronics warehouse in an isolated industrial park. Little do they know, though, that a consignment of special forces is using the warehouse as a hideout after coming under ambush from the henchmen of the Albanian mafioso they're transporting.

It's a familiar setup to be sure, and one we'll undoubtedly return to later in this week's list. However, it does the job, setting up a cleverly balanced three-way tussle, with Siri displaying the confidence and panache that surely led to his Hollywood contract and English-language debut with Hostage. In many ways it benefits from having a largely unrecognizable cast, as with the protracted gun battle taking centre stage as the goons lay siege to the warehouse, there's little time to be distracted by familiar faces and we can get on with business. With the real baddies being represented only by the murderously fingernailed Nexhep and hordes of faceless disposables assaulting the warehouse wave after wave, the character interest lies in the uneasy comradeship between the special forces and the robbers, neither side being convinced of the other's motivations but recognizing that they need to work together to combat an altogether more dangerous foe. There's little about The Nest that makes it truly outstanding, but it's a tight and professional caper that pays homage to John Carpenter and showcases how the siege mentality can easily transcend the language barrier - it's one of the few subtitled flicks my generally word-phobic friends have been able to sit through and enjoy with complaint.

8. From Dusk Till Dawn

The first entrant on today's list to feature an inhuman force of besiegers, and most certainly not the last, From Dusk Till Dawn is one of the few films I've seen to adequately document and address the serious real-world concerns and consequences of building a strip club on the ruins of an ancient Aztec temple that for centuries has housed a sizeable throng of Mexican vampires. You'd think the planning department would have had a field day with that one. Nevertheless, said strip club was indeed built, and when antihero bank robbers George Clooney and Quentin Tarantino stumble in, accompanied by a vacationing family who've reluctantly smuggled them over the Mexican border, it doesn't take long before all hell - quite literally - breaks loose. After a striptease performed by Salma Hayek and the world's luckiest snake has lulled everyone into a false sense of security, nightfall strikes and half the bar's population turns into vampires, and proceed to do what vampires do best in an extremely bloody fashion. Pretty much the only benevolent act that comes out of this is that QT is bitten, bleeds to death, turns into a vampire and is subsequently killed again, leaving the infinitely more charismatic Clooney to solidify himself in the lead protagonist role.

With the remaining bar patrons forced to defend the bar from the onslaught of the undead, the film turns into one of the more unexpected siege movies you'll come across, with our heroes (Clooney's sheer charm is so winning we tend to forget he's actually a villain and a murderer; good job QT already bought it, as his character wouldn't have overcome that hurdle) using everything from holy water to crossbows to fend off the winged enemy and pray for the sunrise, which proves a quite literal salvation in this case. Needless to say, the film's entire position on this list could be accounted for just to see Hayek as cinema's sexiest vampire, but as a siege flick it holds up pretty well too, walking on just the right side of ridiculous, and while it doesn't deliver as much suspense as many - well, any - of this week's other entrants, there's enough splatter and horrible laughs to make up for it. Surprisingly enough, From Dusk Till Dawn went on to spawn two direct-to-video sequels (Texas Blood Money and The Hangman's Daughter), neither of which, predictably, deliver anywhere near the level of bloody siege entertainment their predecessor has to offer. Were it not for, well, a good few of the remaining films this week, Dusk would be the best undead siege flick there is.

7. Tremors

I had to do a mental double take when my initial brainstorming for this column brought up Tremors as a possibility for inclusion, but thinking about it in the cold light of day, it's certainly feasible to term it a siege movie, so with the risk of offending the purists offset by the potential for pleasing fans of campy B-movie entertainment, what the hell, let's throw it into the mix. The progenitor of a surprisingly diverse franchise - seriously, it's been milked almost as much as Highlander - Tremors may just be one of the best horror-comedies ever made (hmmm... there's an idea for a future column), following genial handymen Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward as they seek to escape their humdrum lives in a ghost town in the middle of the Nevada desert, only to find that a band of mutant subterranean worm things has set about making the town's inhabitants their collective bitches. The Graboids, as they come to be known, possess a thirst for mayhem and seem to have no purpose other than to undertake an entertaining massacre of the townsfolk.

On first impressions, Tremors really doesn't appear to be a siege movie, but look beneath the surface [peripheral pun GET!] and you'll find the roots - or perhaps larvae might be more appropriate - of my argument. Unlike the majority of other films under discussion this week, there's no fixed building that our heroes are forced to defend, but the tiny, isolated desert town of Perfection makes a more than adequate substitute. The Graboids employ all the behaviour and tactics of classic siege warfare: encircling the target, cutting off all lines of communication and access, and gradually pressing down the defended area, working in quiet at first but becoming increasingly violent as the townsfolk become aware of the situation and start fighting back as best they can, and happy to win the battle by attrition. As with all good siege flicks, the tension escalates as the attackers work their way closer to the protagonists, until there's a final life-or-death standoff. Naturally, it being dressed up more as a traditional horror-comedy featuring giant worms attacking the guy from Footloose, it's by no means the most obvious reading of the film, but it's how I see it. Still, it remains that even if you don't, the fact that it's one of the pinnacles of its subgenre means it's more than enjoyable viewing regardless, and deserving of a watch if you've never had the pleasure.

6. Under Siege

It was perhaps a given that this would make the list in some form or another, being as it's the only decent siege film with the word "siege" actually in the title, not to mention Steven Seagal's finest hour (which may very well be the actual definition of "damning with faint praise"). Seagal dons the checkered trousers and steely gaze of his most iconic *cough* role, killer chef Casey Ryback, equally capable in combat with his navy SEAL skills or his cookery talents and quite possible the only film character in history who could realistically kill a man with a soup strainer. When Ryback's battleship comes, you guessed it, under siege from a gang of commandos led by the über-maniacal tandem of Tommy Lee Jones and Gary Busey, it's time to hail to the chef as Seagal, along with a random topless chick and a small posse of armed navy types, is forced to withhold the ambush and save the day, while simultaneously displaying as little in the way of acting chops as feasible in a cinematic release. The baddies have some sort of masterplan behind their attempts to seize control of the U.S.S. Thunderbox, something to do with stealing nuclear warheads or some such (or perhaps they're desperate for some advice on making the perfect bouillabaisse), that threatens to drag Under Siege into more straightforward action movie territory, but the film holds its own as a siege flick.

With the action taking place on a battleship, the ground that Seagal and co. are forced to hold is somewhat more idiosyncratic than usually found in siege films, with the typical siege dynamics of the encroaching horde gradually narrowing the field of refuge and cutting off all communication and escape routes not able to come fully into play. Ryback, fortunately enough, displays a knack for the ship's schematics and is able to lead the good guys into strategic positions to negate the besiegers' advantage. To be fair, any chance of Under Siege diverting too far from a standard action movie template is essentially annulled by Seagal's action-man persona, all good-natured murderous intent and single-handed dispatcher of an army of goons, but it still possesses sufficient elements of a typical siege to absolve it from claims of false advertising. What really makes it stand out from the pack though is the presence of Busey and Jones as chief henchman and criminal mastermind respectively. Busey, of course, is naturally one of cinema's most insane actors, and Jones seems like he felt obligated to keep up, creating an utterly mad, bad and dangerous foe. If those two were on your doorstep trying to break into your home, I submit that you wouldn't have quite the presence of mind Seagal displays here, even if your home was a battleship and you were a dab hand with a kitchen knife. Now there's a cheese-fuelled daydream.

5. The Mist

The third film this week to feature a non-human foe trying to obliterate their paltry human nemeses, proving that it was a good job after all I decided to relent and allow the undead and the monstrous into the column. They would have only eaten my brains otherwise, anyway. The Mist, owner of one of the movie world's most divisive endings in recent years, is adapted from a Stephen King story, as is Frank Darabont's usual modus operandi when it comes to having original ideas. Everyman artist Thomas Jane, whose work is apparently ghost-painted by Drew Struzan, finds himself penned in [zing!] to the local supermarket, along with his young son and a sizeable number of townsfolk, after a violent storm is followed by a thick descending mist that prevents those folks who are out buying supplies from returning home. The paranoia begins when a mad old coot comes running in just steps ahead of the mist with blood streaming down his face, claiming there's "something" in the mist, with the sort of quality elucidation that's typical of the elderly. Needless to say, once Jane and a few accomplices discover that said "something" is actually an army of hideous demons intent on eating anything living that gets in their way, panic begins to set in as the supermarket crew attempt to hold out against the onslaught, in a building whose front-facing wall is built entirely of glass.

Quite the setup. The film initially loses a few points - as a siege flick at least, but it's a better film for it - for having such a large group under siege, and for focussing heavily on the interpersonal conflicts and dynamics that result from the group at the expense of the siege itself, but that's easily forgivable in context, and there's no doubting it wouldn't have had such a dramatic impact without those elements. The Mist becomes a more subversive take on siege warfare, as for all the dangers posed by the monsters in the mist and their horribly inventive creature design, the real threat lurks within the fortified store as people begin to turn on each other left right and center. For all the gruesomeness afforded by the hellspawn that invade the spawn, the real (non-literal) bile is spewed by religious zealot Marcia Gay Harden as a truly despicable villain who converts the shopgoers to her cause - which involves human sacrifice, natch - with alarming rapidity. Once our core group of "heroes" is properly established by the halfway mark, it becomes a lot clearer who's besieging who and the film becomes more straightforwardly enjoyable for it. Kudos too to Darabont for having the balls to craft such a dark ending, which had fans of the King original up in arms but is certainly one of horror cinema's biggest talking points of the last few years.

4. Zulu

One of history's great sieges, apparently, the Battle of Rorke's Drift - in which a small force of a hundred or so British soldiers repelled a two-day onslaught by an army of four thousand Zulu warriors. Mind you, I only learn my lessons about history from the movies, so it's probably no surprise I'd think that given that Zulu is such an entertaining war film. Thankfully for our purposes, it also depicts a historically accurate - well, mostly - siege of a bigger scale than anything else covered this week. The premise is simple enough, as a band of British officers (including Michael "Bloody" Caine in an early role, as the spectacularly named Gonville Bromhead) fortifies and defends a small supply depot on the borders of Zulu country, against a vastly numerically superior force of indigenous warriors. The film is a pretty straightforward presentation of siege warfare, as the Zulus attack (leading to Caine's famous summative proclamation "Zulus, sir! Thousands of 'em!"), are repelled, regroup, lather rinse and repeat, gaining further ground and taking further casualties as the day and night progress.

The film is packed with memorable moments, from the Brits singing the Welsh military song "The March of the Men of Harlech" in response to the Zulus' war chants, to the transformation of Henry Hook from cowardly private to heroic defender of the Brits' wounded when the Zulus attack and set fire to their war hospital. It's the simple fun of the war film that's the chief ingredient though, with Zulu playing somewhat like an Anglicized western, with the Zulus taking the part of the Native Americans and the British as a much more smartly dressed version of the US army. Calling Zulu a simple war film may, in hindsight, be somewhat demeaning to the eleven recipients of the VC from the real-life version of the conflict, but I'm going to bite that bullet and run with it. I'm unsure how well the film was received on the other side of the pond, but apparently it's now public domain in the US so it shouldn't be too hard to track down a copy if you haven't seen it, at the very least to see the only siege movie on this list that features the use of a crate of biscuits as a strategic defensive fortification.

3. Romero's original 'Dead' trilogy

Aha, the first real "cheat" entry since beginning my tenure at 'Ten Deep', and it feels good. I wonder if the "lazy writing" accusers will be out in force. Since George A. Romero's first three zombie movies would more than likely all have made the cut individually, I decided for the sake of variety to combine them into a single entry to allow some other films the chance to shine. Night, Dawn and Day, still three of the premier zombie movies ever to be released, all essentially feature the same setup, with a dwindling group of human survivors forced to fight off the zombie hordes in a farmhouse, a shopping mall and a military bunker respectively - although the scale of the onslaught increases with each film, they're still straightforward siege scenarios. Later entry in the series Land, while featuring some siege elements, takes a look at a broader canvas, and I haven't seen Diary, or indeed read much about it, so I don't know if that would have met this week's criteria. Regardless, we're sticking with the original loosely-connected trilogy. Plus, the inclusion of the movies as a group also allows us some debate about which of the three is the better film (my two cents, for your adulation/scorn: Dawn's the best, Day's the scariest, Night's the most important).

Naturally, the very nature of the zombie as a movie beastie lends itself greatly towards siege scenarios, with the slow, relentless approach of the living dead more often than not forcing any survivors into hiding and to hold up as best they're able, with the best they can hope for usually being to break out and find their way to a more suitable fortification in which to withstand the zombie siege. Of course due to the zombies' lack of basic motor functions, any advancement in the siege is usually attained through human error rather than the attackers' own merits, whether it be due to not having seen enough zombie films to know how to fight them in Night, wheelbarrowing a guy through the zombie hordes in search of supplies in Dawn or, beyond foolishly, keeping a zombie chained up on the inside of the stronghold in Day. Well, that's what happens to the human brain in situations of immense stress, or when it just doesn't want to feel the gentle caress of two dozen zombified teeth sinking into its cortex. It does however give a slightly different feel to the siege, as rather than wait for the aggressors to make ingress, we're on the edge of our seats waiting for the defenders to cock something up - which given the nature of human, well, nature, is tragically inevitable. Needless to say, Romero's trilogy is essential viewing, preferable all three in a row if you really want to experience the escalating siege mentality and the overwhelming futility of trying to fight off a world populated by zombies.

2. Assault on Precinct 13

I hinted at this film's inclusion earlier, and fans of the AP13 remake be damned, it was mildly diverting and Brian Boitano Dennehy is always good value, but it's nothing compared to the Carpenter original. Every now and then it's a fun exercise to take a look at Carpenter's back catalogue and marvel at the sheer gulf in quality between his largely average post-1990 output and his streak of classics in the late 70s and 80s. Assault on Precinct 13 stands up almost as well as true classics Halloween and The Thing, but is a somewhat different take on the horror/thriller genre. Martin West is the woebegotten parent who, after witnessing his young daughter being callously murdered by a local hood, chases him into gang territory and offs him in revenge, before retreating to a local police station to seek sanctuary. Unfortunately for him though, a) said hood was in fact a pretty prominent member of the local gangland hierarchy and his pals are out for retribution, b) said police station is in an isolated area of town and only crewed by a skeleton staff awaiting its decommissioning, and c) said sanctuary is also home to notorious killer Napoleon Wilson, who despite his pretentious name is ruthless and keen to escape custody. Cue hijinks!

As the station comes under siege from an army of gangland thugs, forcing an ad-hoc defence from the few remaining cops and their reluctant prisoners , it's clear that Carpenter is establishing a darker take on a siege flick than you might anticipate (as if the gratuitous - and glorious - shooting of a young girl presented in close-up wasn't enough of a clue; if only more directors these days had that much chutzpah). The besiegers are presented in a manner similar to other Carpenter antagonists like the ghosts of The Fog or even Michael Myers himself, possessing inhuman qualities and a sinister, almost supernatural resolve as they swamp the station in wave after wave. The faceless blitz, initially merely worrying, soon begins to take on new depths as the inhabitants of the station come to realize (with the exception of West, who pretty much remains in a catatonic state throughout the film and is, annoyingly, one of the few pieces of the whole that just doesn't fit) there's seemingly nothing that will prevent the attackers from breaking in and wreaking their bloody vengeance. A masterpiece in suspense filmmaking more than representative of Carpenter's impeccable filmmaking credentials (even the score, composed by the man himself, is damn catchy), it's also the finest modern-day siege flick that money can buy.

1. Seven Samurai

Could it really have been anything else? Although the siege contained within Akira Kurosawa's epic takes up a smaller proportion of the film's running time than the others listed here (although that's set off by the film's long-distance length of nearly three and a half hours), the conflict between the samurai, the farmers they defend and the attacking bandits is central to the movie's themes. Takashi Simura is the aging ronin recruited by the people of a nearby village who are scheduled in for a bandit raid in several month's time, and who takes charge of the situation by gathering up a select band of other masterless samurai, including (somewhat unsurprisingly) Japanese acting legend Toshiro Mifune to aid the village's defenses for the chiefly price of three warm meals a day. The villagers and the samurai come to form an uneasy alliance in their quest to protect the village's barley crops from the greedy hands and grasping stomachs (or should that be the other way around?) of the evil bandidos.

Much has been written about Kurosawa's (arguably) masterpiece, and much of that more eloquent and incisive than I could hope for, although I'll admit I could stand to see more of his work to educate myself a little more. Still, I'm just here to tell you how great Seven Samurai is as a siege flick. Here's how great: very. Not only is it a masterclass in filmmaking, it also set the template for most, if not all, of the other siege movies discussed this week, particularly the dynamics of the untrustworthy alliance between the two defensive parties - after all, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, right? - and the gradual but sustained casualties taken by the besieged minority The action of the siege itself is top notch, Kurosawa proving my fellow 411 writers' assertions in the Top 5 a few weeks ago that he was in many ways the first true action director. There's certainly no faulting the technical ability on display (a shade below Rashomon, perhaps, but still top notch). However the overarching themes of the conflict between the Japanese working and warring classes add extra depth to what, even shorn of its symbolism, is a truly awe-inspiring siege flick and more than worthy of its predictable number one slot this week.

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And finally…

Feeling aggrieved or elated at this week's ten picks? Then let me know! The magic of the interweb allows you to post your comments right here on this very page, and if they're especially insightful (or idiotic), I may even respond in the next column. Be sure to tune in next week for another edition of 'Ten Deep', but until then - keep watching the skies.