Why didn't he tell them he was a member of the network earlier? I am really missing something because I don't understand why he would lose all his fingers for no reason. Why did he suddenly change his mind?
MY take is that somehow the CIA got his name and made up this amazing plot to trap him and get the names of the members of the cell in the Netherlands.
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Americans are against torture because it does not work. Under torture, folks will tell you anything you want to hear - whether it's true or not - which does not help the American war or intelligence effort.
With some exceptions, torture does work on people from countries that have experienced the negative consequences of torturous procedures, which is why the Americans farm-out the torture to countries that practice torture on a regular basis.
Come on! Americans use torture. I'm sure they do, not only abroad like in Guantanamo Bay, either!
shareThe lady says he was well trained, it may sound big news to you but if I was on his shoes and was innocent I would also all my fingers and ultimately my life without even know why. Torture may work with with people that have something to say and are not "well trained", but someone that is innocent or well trained will get the same treatment.
It's not just Americans, anyone that lives in a civilized world would under normal conditions be against torture... besides terrorists are far from being the major treat to human life, after all we have way more chances of being killed in a car accident than in a terrorist attack yet I don't see the authorities being that strict with drunk drivers and what not. Hell fast food probably kills more people per year than terrorist in 10!
YOUR take? That (plot-spoiling) is what the movie shows.
shareThanks for the spoilers in the subject.
shareFirst of all, you people crying spoiler, I am probably the #1 opponent of spoilers on this site. However, I reserve my outrage for films that are relatively new. After 4 years or more, don't come on a movie board if you're against spoilers because the discussions has probably advanced to the level where they are natural.
Be that as it may, this movie has a major plot twist at the end and it would be nice if people still marked their postings with a spoiler alert.
Now to the subject at hand. Your take, jimpeggy is probably fully justified. However there is another way to see this. I think Martijn's girlfriend was a CIA plant. She recruited him and turned him in. Remember the tear filled goodbye at the airport? She knew she would never see him again. This is a classic case of entrapment.
As to why he wouldn't talk...that's a subject for a indepth discussion. I'm sure he thought he was protecting his girlfriend for one. And for another, he never knows who these people really are.
"I'd never ask you to trust me. It's the cry of a guilty soul."
He didn't really trust them until Ahmat divulged that he was Hassan Fikree. "Hassan" corroborated information that his girlfriend had told him and he trusted his girlfriend.
shareYes, homer34. This affirms my theory, posted earlier above, that his girlfriend was in on it all the time. Martijn is a case of someone with a natural bent towards mistrust of big government's collaboration with big business being persuaded to take the horrific next step toward anarchy and out right terrorism. In other words, entrapment. The CIA set him up, and the CIA brought him down to see who else they would catch in his net. And I have no doubt that this is standard CIA procedure, horrific as that is.
The reason entrapment is illegal in this country is that one can never prove that the person thus entrapped would ever have resorted to these means without the persuasion of the people who set the bait in the trap. I would have liked to have seen more about the girlfriend, at least what happens to her.
"I'd never ask you to trust me. It's the cry of a guilty soul."
Spoiler alert!!! Spoiler alert!!! Spoiler alert!!!
(I do think it's important here because this movie has a surprise ending--I already talked about that in another thread.)
Yeah, I think you landed on a little plot hole there. HE knows he's not CIA and if he thinks his captors are terrorists, why doesn't he find some clever way of letting them know what he's doing. I guess he didn't trust that they'd be in on the plot. But it was a little weird that he lets Aicha in on it AFTER his fingers are gone. Or maybe he just wasn't all that clever...