A lot of thought went into Unthinkable

Three nuclear devices have been placed in separate cities across the US, the terrorist responsible, Arthur Younger, played by Michael Sheen, has been captured. The only problem is the authorities have no idea which cities are bombs have been placed in, and all efforts to locate them have been fruitless, and the terrorist refuses to speak.

This is when the government become desperate and give the terrorist into the hands of Samuel L. Jackson’s character “H”, a well practised and very thorough torturer, who knows his craft very well and is not in the least bit afraid to use it in the extreme.

The difference with Unthinkable is that as the movie progresses we become less concerned about the increasingly nasty torture practices used my Jackson, and become more concerned about the moral rights and wrongs of whether or not this man should be tortured in order to save perhaps many hundreds of thousands of lives.

The question becomes is this one man’s human rights worth more or less than the lives of three cities full of people. It is this angle that separates this high-quality movie from others that concentrate on shoot-em-up American heroes versus bad guy in Islamic extremists.

In this case we are torn between the seemingly more evil American antihero, and the increasingly tortured terrorist. But the real issues come to light as Younger simply refuses to give in no matter how far H pushes his torture techniques.

As the clock ticks, more and more freedom is given to the torturer in order to get the information out of him before time runs out. As H says Younger “needs to know that there is no limit to how far I will go” and as the film progresses we realise that there really is no limit to what he will do to get the information he needs. Yet somehow we do not turn away from the horror but instead get sucked into the moral maze of this excellent movie.