John Stanley reviews an oddly topical direct-to-video movie about terrorism

New Terrrorists to Hate
& We Need Them Because:

WHEN YOU GO to war, you need an enemy and an enemy leader to direct your anger against. After Pearl Harbor the leaders we could hate were Hitler, Mussolini and Hirohito. You could have all three or take your pick. In that same tradition of World War II, the American media has now given us a man we can hate passionately. He's a scumbag named Osama bin Laden and he is like a modern 21st Century "Fu Manchu," the inscrutible Asian who once made life miserable for the British Empire in the fictional works of Sax Rohmer.

One thing about bin Laden I have not heard mentioned in the major media is the fact that more than a year ago he was diagnosed as having stomach cancer. Only because I was listening to a talk show on San Francisco's KSFO radio did I learn this important though obscure piece of information, from an Afghanistan expert undergoing interview. Has the mainstream media ignored this lest it bring some sympathy to the most wanted, and hated, man in the world? If bin Laden does have cancer, it's very possible he could die of natural causes before he is ever brought to justice.

That means we may need another terrorist figure (or figures) to direct our hatred toward, and so I thought I should expose you to a couple of possibilities who have been totally ignored by the American media. Get over your fixation on Osama Bin Laden because we got better madmen to fry.

But first I have to tell you about a movie I just saw. There is an old cliche that art imitates life, but I'm amazed at how often the adage is proven to be true. I'm also amazed at the coincidences of life, because no sooner had I seen this movie than I found out from a totally different source that the movie might be depicting a true-life terrorist. Not just any old terrorist, but a dangerous psychopath, the kind of pitiless madman everyone loves to hate. The kind who would blow up the world, given the chance.

The movie is a new Columbia Tristar direct-to-video thriller that never even saw any theatrical release: "The Point Men." However, there are times when obscure B movies can be culturally important.

It stars Christopher Lambert as a gallant Israeli agent named Tony who is part of a special team that tracks down and kills the world's most dangerous terrorists. It's got some interesting things going for it: It was directed by John Glen, who helmed three James Bond films ("License to Kill," "The Living Daylights" and "For Your Eyes Only"), and it's based on a novel by Steven Hartov, "The Heat of Ramadan." Glen keeps his story moving with more than enough action and, given our sentiments toward terrorists nowadays, it's bound to be a mild, if not great, crowd pleaser.

I guess because the United States hadn't started kicking any asses over in the Middle East yet I decided one recent afternoon to check it out after a screener (a copy sent in advance of the film's video-store release date) had been sent to me.

Lambert, who costars with Maryam D'Abo, Donald Sumpter and Kerry Fox, proved to be a worthy ass-kicking surrogate and satisifed my every anti-terrorist need by kniving to death, in the grossest of ways, a handful of terrorist henchmen, and shooting a few other Middle East dastards and scumbags with intensive pistol fire that ripped their bodies to pieces. I must have been beaming each time a terrorist went down screaming. Now Allah will embrace you, you slimeballs. The more violent each death, the better I enjoyed it. Isn't it wonderful how movies will sometimes stimulate us and bring us utter visceral joy?

The screenplay by Ripley Highsmith (related to Patricia, maybe?) features a terrorist named Amar (played by Vincent Regan) who undergoes plastic surgery, then cold-bloodedly kills the doctor and nurse to keep his new identity a secret. He then sets out with his new face to wipe out Lambert's team of anti-terrorists by deceiving them and killing them in an isolated situation one at a time.

Lambert's hot on Amar's trail with all weapons blazing, but always one murder behind so the plot won't stagnate. The terrorist with two faces finally gets his just desserts--blown away as all terrorists get blown away at the movies. (It should happen more in real life, and maybe it will from now on. Are you reading this, President Bush?)

Now here comes the strange coincidence. I had no sooner finished watching this action-packed, fast-moving take on terrorism, with all the suspense and espionage cliches firmly in place, when I received a piece of E-mail from a friend of mine whose brother used to work for U.S. Intelligence. My friend had received this from his brother and had felt it important enough to pass along to me. It really shook me up, considering I had just finished "The Point Men," and considering none of this information had found its way into our media here in America.

It was an Intelligence report taken from the website www.Janes.com . This is what I read:

"Israel's military intelligence service, Aman, suspects that Iraq is the state that sponsored the suicide attacks on the New York Trade Center and the Pentagon. Directing the mission, Aman officers believe, were two of the world's foremost terrorist masterminds: the Lebanese Imad Mughniyeh, head of the special overseas operations for Hizbullah, and the Egyptian Dr. Ayman Al Zawahiri, senior member of Al-Qaeda and possible successor to the ailing Osama Bin Laden."

Ayman al Zawahiri ...someone to hate?

I felt really great after reading that. Hey, here were some terrorists to hate as much as Osama bin Laden. One with the name Imad, which with slight reconstruction could become "I Mad." And here finally was confirmation of what I had heard on KSFO radio: "the ailing Osama bin Laden." So the sucker was sick. Maybe he did have stomach cancer after all. And maybe he was dying. One can certainly hope that he's lying in some wretched cave in Afghanistan, with rats scurrying in the darkness around him, moaning in pain as the cancer cells eat away at his intestines, liver and kidneys. Maybe it's even eating away at what's left of his heart. Don't die, Osama. Just sprawl there in the filth of your own feces, moaning your guts out.

This is an image for all Americans to savor. There is justice and revenge, after all. And remember, you read it here first.

I resumed reading the report. "The two terrorists have not been seen for some time. Mughniyeh is probably the world's most wanted outlaw. Unconfirmed reports in Beirut say he has undergone plastic surgery and is unrecognizable. Zawahiri is thought to be based in Egypt. He could be Bin Laden's chief representative outside Afghanistan."

Undergone plastic surgery?

So, art does imitate life. Plastic surgery is what had motivated the plot of "The Point Men." Had the writers chosen Mughniyeh as a prototype for their chief villain? I was feeling even better now, because here was a scuzbucket you could really sink your anti-terrorist sentiments into. I especially liked "the world's most wanted outlaw."

But more from the report: "The Iraqis, who for several years paid smaller groups to do their dirty work, were quick to discover the advantages of Al-Qaeda. The Israeli sources claim that for the past two years Iraqi intelligence officers were shuttling between Baghdad and Afghanistan, meeting with Ayman Al Zawahiri. According to the sources, one of the Iraqi intelligence officers, Salah Suleiman, was captured last October by the Pakistanis near the border with Afghanistan. The Iraqis are also reported to have established strong ties with Imad Mughniyeh.

"We've only got scraps of information, not the full picture," admits one intelligence source, "but it was good enough for us to send a warning six weeks ago to our allies that an unprecedented massive terror attack was expected. One of our indications suggested that Imad Mughniyeh met with some of his dormant agents on secret trips to Germany. We believe that the operational brains behind the New-York attack were Mughniyeh and Zawahiri, who were probably financed and got some logistical support from the Iraqi Intelligence Service (SSO)."

"Mughniyeh was the only one believed to have tried it before. On April 12th 1997, he was reported to be only two hours away from achieving the highest goal of any terrorist organisation (until Sept. 11): blowing up an Israeli El-Al airliner above Tel Aviv. A man carrying a forged British passport with the name Andrew Jonathan Neumann was in a Jerusalem hotel preparing a bomb he was supposed to take on board an El-Al flight leaving Israel, when it accidentally went off. Andrew Jonathan Neumann was very badly injured but strong enough to reveal later to the Israelis that he was not British but Lebanese, and that his operation was supposed to be a special `gift' to Israel from Imad Mughniyeh.

"Bin Laden is a schoolboy in comparison with Mughniyeh," says an Israeli who knows Mughniyeh. "The guy is a genius, someone who refined the art of terrorism to its utmost level. We studied him and reached the conclusion that he is a clinical psychopath motivated by uncontrollable psychological reasons, which we have given up trying to understand. The killing of his two brothers by the Americans only inflamed his strong motivation."

"Experts on Iraq and Saddam Hussein also believe that Iraq was the state behind the two terror masterminds. In recent months, there was a change, and Iraq decided to get into the terror business. On July 7th, they tried for the first time to send a suicide bomber, trained in Baghdad, to blow up Tel Aviv airport." "Sources believe it will be very difficult to get to the bottom of this unprecedented terror operation. However, they believe the chief of the Iraqi SSO is Qusai Hussein, the dictator's son, and his organization is the most likely to have been involved.

"Mughniyeh, 48, is a `sick man', says an intelligence officer who was in charge of his file. `He is considered by Western intelligence agencies as the most dangerous active terrorist today. He is wanted by several governments and the Americans have put a $2 million reward on his head'."

Here is someone we can all hate with a passion. "The most dangerous active terrorist." Maybe we've been hating the wrong guy. Gee, Osama, maybe you are a mild-mannered sentimentalist after all. A God-fearing, misunderstood Muslim.

I take it back. I still hate you, Osama. May the rats eat out your guts.

I was sure glad Christopher Lambert killed that two-faced bastard in the movie, and now I'm wishing Lambert was out there, lurking through the Afghanistan or Irani mountains, creeping up on not Osama bin Laden's hiding place, but the hiding place of the wretched Imad Mughniyeh. Christopher Lambert, the best anti-terrorist fighter in the world, ready to slit Mughniyeh's throat with his wilderness/survival bayonet. In the name of freedom and democracy.

It is a fantasy image that any of us, movie buff or not, should appreciate.

© 2001 by John Stanley.

You can comment on this column or contact John Stanley with an email to: talkback@thecolumnists.com

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