so, who was this very important Middle Eastern man?
The movie suffered from some very choppy editing.
The middle eastern man was an assassin brought in to commit murder, which he did and then went back.
shareHonestly, that still doesn't make sense.
He was brought in especially to kill some reserve soldier and his sister and her baby?
They wanted to kill the soldier, video it, use it as propaganda, its a terrorist act. The sequence is def influenced by an incident that happened in the North of England when some British Muslim radicals headed by a guy who came from Afghanistan planned to kidnap a Muslim british soldier, behead him and video it. They got caught just before they were about to do it. I think they got nabbed when they bought a video camera as the secret services had been monitoring them.
The mother and baby were not part of the plan. The assassin loony did it after he looked round the house and saw the baby bottle and knew Ash was lying about the fact there was no one else in the house.
I still don't get, though, why that reserve guy was so important to them. There must have been plenty of people who were higher up on the chain, or were better skilled killers (for instance, when he ran upstairs for no discernible reason, that seemed just beyond ridiculous to me - I expected him to have a gun there or *something* that would have justified that move).
I just think he was overall too insignificant and incompetent to import a super-vicious assassin for the sole purpose of taking care of him.
I can understand the real-life parallel, but within the context of the movie it just didn't work. I also don't see how it would have worked as propaganda when they botched the operation so horribly.
People higher up are difficult to get to, the whole point is the lower he is the easier to get to. Soft targets are what terrorist sickos are all about.
Look at Iraq and Afghanistan, those extremist loonies grab anyone with a western name, even foreign aid workers, they behead them, video it and put it online, as we have seen many times tragically, the point is the propaganda and terror it creates. As long as its a western person, its the symbolism of the act, "you kill our people we will kill yours" messed up attitude.
Assassins are brought in from abroad as was the one in the real life incident as they can come in and then leave and disappear back into their own countries, no traces of them, its how it works. The US mafia do this a lot, they bring in killers from Italy, if they want someone killed within their group and don't want their bosses to be able to trace it back to them. That way no one can trace it back to them
How did they botch the operation? they got the poor guy and killed him. The Cleric and his controllers were prob very happy at the carnage, as far as those loonies are concerned the more carnage those psychos create the better.
The assassin made sure Ash and his friend went in first to see what would happen, cannon fodder. Ash went upstairs because he was following him and was furious about the death of his friend, he was in a blind rage, I think it was intentional to show also that he was untrained.
The way I see it is there were two objectives to the operation, The Clerics bosses instructed him to arrange to kill the guy and video it and use it to instill terror and propaganda, the second reason was the Cleric used the operation to test Ash and put him in a situation to see how he would cope, if he made it he would be sent to Afghanistan, trained up and used years later to perpetrate the bombings. Also if Ash is involved in murder he is now totally involved with the radicals and his hands are just as dirty as anyone else, so there is no way out for him.
I thought the whole sequence really fitted into the film as it showed the process of indoctrination these guys slowly go through.
How did they botch the operation?I just think that murdering a baby is too heinous an act for anyone to condone, no matter how dogmatic their thinking. But I may be wrong.
And I meant that the reserve soldier guy did not strike me as a trained killer, not Ash. Ash seemed a lot more together in all of his scenes.
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The assassin was seriously unhinged, he knew Ash was lying and if someone saw Ash then they would all be at risk. So he went upstairs and killed the woman, when he saw the baby he just expressed the pure evil in his nature, he'd kill anything and as 7/7 and other terrorist acts have showed us, they don't really care who they kill, its indiscriminate slaughter.
The reserve guy (if he was a reserve guy as it kept ambiguous if he was just a reserve or a torturer) is just that, if you're a reserve doesn't mean you're a killer.
Anyhoo enjoyed this chat, film has kept me thinking for ages since I saw it.
oh I just remembered the reserve guy ran up the stairs to protect the woman and baby, he locked the door and prob told them to stay in there
shareHow did they botch the operation?
Apart from ending up killing the family, How about one of them getting stabbed in the eye.
What I dont get is why each of the assassins went in one at a time rather than working as a team.
"Apart from ending up killing the family, How about one of them getting stabbed in the eye.
What I dont get is why each of the assassins went in one at a time rather than working as a team. "
You don't seem to understand how their logic works. The goal was to killed the retired soldier and filmed his death as propaganda, which they did. The assassin killed the wife and her baby just because they were there. And as they said they don't care about people who are not one of "them". The British soldiers kill Muslim wives and children so, in their minds they deserve to have their women and children killed too. That was "collateral damage". As for sending Ash and Yussif first it was a way to test their qualities in a mission. Ash succeeded and obviously Yussif failed but he never was important for the man who recruited them. He was just a casualty who died in a glorious mission so he was happier than the others because he was sure to go to paradise.
That's what you call religious fanatism.
Exactly.
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