Taken: Liam Neeson needs info on his kidnapped daughter and, it not being forthcoming after general questioning, hooks a Eastern European trafficker of prostitutes up to a fuse box and electrocutes him. He talks. His daughter lives.

Man on Fire: Denzel Washington cracks skulls (and shoots people) in the search of information to save a kidnapped girl. They talk. Girl lives.

Tango and Cash: Kurt Russell chokes info out of his assassin. He talks.

On Dangerous Ground (Yes, 1952): Walter Brent beats the information he needs out of a bad guy (though right before he does it, he says, "Why do you make me do it? You know you're gonna' talk.").

Commando: Arnold Schwarzenegger "lets him go" after he gets the information he needs. (Contrast this with the torture scene in True Lies, in which Schwarzenegger is the torturee, but, amazingly, resists!)

The Dark Knight: Batman drops mob boss off building.

Hidalgo: Strider beats the information he needs out of an Arab. He talks.

Crank 2: Shotgun goes up bad guy's anus (LIKE IN PRISON!). Information comes out.

Dirty Harry resorts to torture to save a buried girl.

Untouchables: Sean Connery uses psychological torture on the accountant. He talks.

Law and Order SVU: Pick an episode.

L.A. Confidential: Bud White plays Russian roulette with a rapist to get the location of the girl (this is before dangling the district attorney out a window for answers). Both talk.

Face/Off: The baldy thug isn't answering questions until agent John Travolta puts the working end of a pistol in his eye socket. He talks.

Shoot 'Em Up: Monica Bellucci rips out some poor bastard's Prince Albert. He talks.

Fast & Furious (2009): Both Paul Walker and Vin Diesel resort to a little bone crushing and out-the-window-dangling to get the answers they want. All talk.

Some movie that I cannot remember the name of, in which some hero guy lowers a jacked-up car onto a mechanic's chest for info. He talks.

The Departed: Leo Decaprio shoots a drug addict in the knee to get the FBI goods on Costello. He talks.

Patriot Games: Ford also shoots guy in the knee. Talks.

Point Blank (1967): Lee Marvin pounds the info he needs out of one of the Syndicate's plebes.

24: Of course Jack Bauer "can't afford to always play by the rules."

And then there is November's Gran Torino-meets-Death Wish film Harry Brown, in which Michael Caine, as an elderly ex-Royal Marine, does what he does, including torturing a guy for information, "because nobody else will" (Caine's exact words). After Taken and Law Abiding Citizen, Brown is just the latest in a number of recent films advocating torture in the right situations.

The absurdity of this kind of torture was summed up in Walter Sobchak's whole plan in The Big Lebowski to "...roll out. Double back, grab one of 'em and beat it out of him!" The scenarios never vary in result, it must be the way it is. Torture works in film the same way that taxis are always yellow, fat black females are always blunt and sassy, and, yes, you get raped in prison. Watch for these "ticking time bomb" scenes from now on and I promise you will see them everywhere and they will all fit the criteria.

Change just a couple criteria, and the audience immediately understands that torture isn't acceptable or even successful. In these scenarios, torture never works. Just a small handful of examples: Rambo II and III, Braveheart, G.I. Jane, Mission Impossible III, Iron Man (Stark actually gets water-boarded and gives up nothing), Matrix, Fistful of Dollars, T2, True Romance, True Lies, as above, and, infamously, Casino Royale. Noteworthy is Payback, in which Mel Gibson beats info out of people but then when his own toes are put under a ball-peen hammer, he gives false information.

These scenes of resisted torture by the hero reinforce the idea that, what-torture only works on villains like the Taliban or Al Queda?

The films that attempt to be the most influential and intelligent about torture generally fail. For example, Standard Operating Procedure, Rendition and Taxi to the Dark Side are only seen by those who already oppose torture. This is pretty much like how, in the long run, Super Size Me had no influence on how many people eat at McDonald's.

This subtle reinforcement of the "ticking time bomb" scenario is an insidious cancer on the torture "debate." It allows for "a chance" for torture. It makes it "complex" and complex things are never resolved. These scenes aren't leaving films or TV anytime soon, so actors taking these roles, writers creating them, and directors shooting them, however anti-torture they may pretend to be, should be accountable.

And while mental gymnastics like the above are "neat-o," the biggest problem is you and me and everyone who elected Obama and is now more concerned with bigger issues (i.e., Glenn Beck), all while Obama wordsmiths our national morality.

In the July Harper's, Luke Mitchell went to town on Obama in "We Still Torture," passing on the low-hanging waterboarding fruit to instead tackle the most common conventional wisdom on force-feeding, a practice defined as torture by Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions: "[It] most clearly demonstrates this process of inversion and invisibility-not because it is the most horrifying form of torture... but because it has been so completely mainstreamed... Force feeding is understood not only to not be torture but in fact to be a form of mercy."

And this feeding process is not merciful. As the Los Angeles Times described it, "Rather than leave a feeding tube in place, they insert and remove it twice a day. Have you ever pushed a 43-inch tube up your nostril and down into your throat? Tonight, Sami will suffer that for the 479th time." Sami was released a year after that description, which means dude might have been fortunate enough to have been so "saved" over a thousand times. Also, he turned out to just be a journalist. Whoopsie. A force-fed liquid diet has even been justifying as beneficial to prisoners undergoing water-boarding, as chunky vomit makes them choke (unintentionally).


Don't fool yourself. There is not a single major issue over which Obama himself has so much control. So there is not another single major policy that he can "change." The economy has too many moving parts; health care reform, already failing its way to single payer (someday!), is lorded over by the dirtbags of Congress. Change. Torture? He can do it tomorrow. The longer he waits, the greater chance that either we experience another terror attack or he loses in 2012. Both of these possibilities would lead to a greater acceptance of torture as American policy.

More likely, we'll all just agree to passively decide that torture is a "difficult" question with no right and wrong. Why clean the house when you have Febreze?

Abe Sauer is the Awl Associate Editor for Film Studies and Middle American Issues.