Strip Search (2004)

I have just finished watching this Home Box Office cable movie directed by Sidney Lumet and I feel that I have been repeatedly hit over the head as the same points were hammered home.  In a way it is surprising, given the current political climate, that this picture was ever made since it deals with the loss of civil liberties.  It opens in China where student Maggie Gyllenhaal is arrested and dragged off for questioning by an unfeeling flunkey without any indication of her crime.  At this stage we are meant to think that this is the sort of thing that can happen in undemocratic parts of the world.  However the scene moves to New York where an arab student is similarly grabbed and questioned by Glenn Close.  To reinforce the similarities between the two scenarios, exactly the same dialogue is spoken as the inquisition moves back and forth between the locales.  Both suspects are subjected to badgering, humiliation and a strip search until they realise that they no longer have any rights.  One regime is as inhuman as the next and it is all done in the name of national security.  The film was a heavy-handed way of getting this message across, but it certainly made its point.