Infinite Justice (2006)
Accent DVD (region 4)
d. Jamil Dehlavi; pr. Jamil Dehlavi; scr. Jamil Dehlavi; ph. Nicholas D. Knowland, Tony Miller; m. Deborah Mollison; ed. Angelica Landry; cast. Kevin Collins, Raza Jaffrey, Jennifer Calvert, Constantine Gregory, Irvine Iqbal (93 mins)
One of the first films to deal with the ramifications of the War on Terror, Infinite Justice (named after the initial codename for the first post 9-11 military operation, changed to “Enduring Freedom” after muslim groups in the US protested that their religion teaches that only Allah can dispense infinite justice) concerns an American financial reporter supposedly held captive in Karachi, Pakistan by Muslim fundamentalists in protest against the conditions at Guantanamo Bay. It begins with audio reports of 9-11 and President Bush declaring that the terrorists have not only attacked the American way of life, but have attacked the concept of “freedom” itself. It then has audio broadcasts from Bush and British PM Tony Blair about the need for democracies to band together to eliminate the terrorist threat upon freedom.
Based on the story of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, as would be A Mighty Heart, Infinite Justice begins with terrorists forcing a seemingly captive journalist to read a video statement to the effect that he is a Jewish spy sent to defeat Islam and is in service of ‘the Great Satan” as America is referred to in the Islamic Jihadi world. Functional acting and expository dialogue are balanced with intriguing views of how the captive journalist responds to his Islamic captors, with whom, the film reveals, he is initially collaborating, making a personalized documentary in the hope of ascertaining the reason why the terrorist action of 9-11 (shown from a pilot’s eye view of the first plane hitting the twin towers) occurred. But, just as he wants to know “why?” those around him say the real question is “how” and that the only reason for the attack is buried in their resentment of America’s lifestyle.
It is the reporter’s desire to know why that sees him develop contacts within the Islamist movement, which he seeks to explore on his own, though under advisement that should he secure an exclusive interview with a terrorist leader the channel will make him world famous – a prospect this egotistical man cannot resist. However, what remains here intriguing are the reasons behind the why – the oppression of the Muslim people by western governments, al Qaeda’s “point” all along – specifically, that which the Bush government would consider irrelevant to their response, invasion and torture. This rhetoric then leads into scenes of a speech delivered in a mosque, rooting the Jihadi vision of an Islam under attack by the Christian nations following the defeat of the atheist enemy – the Soviet Union – and now looking to the Muslim lands.
Of all the terrorist films made during the post 9-11 years of the Bush Presidency, Infinite Justice is the only fictional film, alongside the subsequent thriller Traitor, to attempt to contextualize the radical Jihadist side of the War on Terror conflict. The “terrorists” here are smart, devoted and sympathetic, victim to the taunts of bullies. Indeed, as the scenes of the Pakistani boy’s childhood in a Christian school show, the Christian nations not only do not listen to the Muslim cause, but attempt to beat them into submission through violence and intimidation. Although this is dramatized at a personal level, it is clear that what the film considers abhorrent at the level of social behaviour is precisely the attitude that underlies diplomatic relations between the West and the Muslim lands. Extremist fanaticism is seen as the response to the forced betrayal of Islamic values: the sympathetic characters here are the Jihadi recruiters for Al Qaeda.
The reporter figure here comes across as an unsympathetic and arrogant man, more concerned with his exclusive documentary than in the lives or values of those he seeks to interview, firstly in America as he begins to trace the financial connections between 9-11 and an Islamic charity, shortly before Al Jazeera begins broadcasting more Bin Laden videotaped recordings. The reporter’s investigation is inter-cut with scenes of a Muslim’s childhood in a Christian school which has no moral issue dispensing corporal punishment to a Muslim boy for not “respecting” their religion and his subsequent adolescence which sees him join Bin Laden and Al Qaeda. Between the two emerges a dynamically scripted account of the diverse nature of the War on Terror, here shorn completely of the simplistic “evil acts of evil men” rhetoric of Bush and Blair that began the film.
In that, Infinite Justice is an Islamic look at the War on Terror situation from the point of view not only the American journalist but that of two Muslims whose faith brings them into the service of Osama Bin Laden. Their interaction as they play chess forms the basis for a curiously symbolic dialogue between the Western Jew and the Islamic Jihadist. Indeed, the sympathetic terrorist figure here angers his superiors, who consider him trying to cement his own myth as the human face of fundamentalism. However, his leadership’s response to the propaganda opportunity is violence, erasing any explanation on the journalist’s tape as to “why?”: hence, fundamentalist violence risks erasing any validity their cause may have.
The final trump-card to Infinite Justice is the manufacture of violence, hence the staging of a beheading video, a set-piece that infiltrated American mainstream cinema proper in The Kingdom and Body of Lies. Interestingly, the beheading video here is rushed and filmed by Western and Pakistani intelligence agents who seek to use the video to reveal the threat posed by the fundamentalist extremists, their concern no longer with rescuing the reporter. In that, Infinite Justice emerges as a cynical clash between an idealistic reporter looking for answers as to why 9-11 happened (the eventual reason given that America does not talk to its enemies, whereas it should open dialogue) and the reality of fundamentalist extremism in Pakistan and the intelligence network that exploits it. In contrast to films which favour the American perspective, this film favours the Jihadist perspective.