Dotsthavesp I wanted to but couldn't!

Stoutor It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

AshUnow This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Kinley This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

GUENOT PHILIPPE Yes, a Costa Gavras movie is always recognizable, as a Yves Boisset one, the ONLY two French directors who dared speaking of political actual facts which other directors were afraid to talk about. In France, it's not like in America, where film makers are free to speak of everything, see for instance ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN or EXECUTIVE ACTION, speaking of Watergate file or JFK assassination...In France, if you except Yves Boisset or Costa Gavras, no one, even today, would dare to speak of this. OK, I admit that Costa Gavras, in this film, doesn't talk of French events, nor as he did for Z, but when he made UN HOMME DE TROP or SECTION SPECIALE, that was directly related to French history. The Costa Gavras scheme is here the same as in Z. He uses an event to emphasize the political dimension just afterwards. Even in using a thriller topic, see Z for instance...I would have loved seeing Costa Gavras directing a film about war in Algeria and OAS organization. I don't think he did. I won't repeat what the other users told about this one, but I repeat, you deal here with a typical Costa Gavras' feature, which I could tell the director's name without seeing the opening credits.

tieman64 Before Oliver Stone there was Costa Gavras, another left leaning director who made his name directing politically charged thrillers. Released in 1972, "Stage of Siege" (along with Gavras' 1980 film, "Missing") would prove highly influential on Stone's own "Salvador".Though it revolves around an incident in Uruguay, in which a US agent is kidnapped, interrogated and killed by guerrillas in Motevideo, the film merely uses this event as a scaffold to examine the geopolitical climate in South America during the Cold War. This was a time in which the US supported, covertly through the CIA, South American military dictatorships, often helping governments battle radicals and guerrillas whom their media spin-doctors branded as terrorists. The film spends much of its running time pointing out the various ways in which the US favours fascist figureheads over democratic ones, the former being far less concerned about their people's welfare and resources, and far more open to foreign business interests and blatant exploitation.The film touches upon the West's use of torture, event sanitization, media spin-doctoring, illegal arrests, imprisonments without due process and the habitual use of death squads, actions which are sadly all still the norm today.Aesthetically, the film is typical of Gavras' work during this period. Gavras utilises a semi documentary style, hitting us with press conferences, many legislative scenes, interrogations, interviews, paper trails, phone calls etc.8/10 – Like Gillo Pontecorvo, a similar film-maker, Gavras' work during this period was hugely influential.

esteban1747 This is not a fiction film. In fact, it reveals the way the guerrilla movement Tupamaros acted in Uruguay during the 70s. For those young people, it is necessary to remind that this left-wing movement was not a guerrilla in the mountains but an urban one, operating mainly in Montevideo. They used to kill esbirros (nasty policemen and agents) and to make justice against the existing dictatorship whenever it was required. The movement operated in a secret and compartmented way, i.e. many of the members did not know each other, thus avoiding to be eliminated by denunciation. Costa Gavras was able to draw the way Tupamaros acted in Uruguay, and also an important happening of those days, the way the CIA agent Mr. Dan Mitrione (Yves Montand) was killed. In fact this movement was disarticulated once new police agents infiltrated in the movement, and the main leaders were discovered. Mitrione was killed but this did not prevent that another CIA "pinch-hitter" for Mitrione came later to replace the dead man. The film may seem as sympathetic to Tupamaros, partially it might be, but this is rather a subtle critic to their methods than congratulation for what they did.

Juan Pablo Moreno In May, 2002 they are fulfilled 30 years of the beginning of the filming of this movie in several leases of Chile (Santiago, Viña del Mar, Valparaíso and Playa Ancha). It was in the second year of the socialistic government of the President Allende and the tension that is perceived in the movie was the one that already was living through the country a year before the military coup of 1973. The Chileans only we could see this movie 2001 and in an alone cinema-art in Santiago that exhibited it for two weeks. In May, 2002 the channel of French cable TV5 exhibited "State of Siege" four times, which has allowed a deeper critical review and to recognize a series of places of the Chile of 30 years ago, which already do not exist or which are now deeply modified. Besides the climate of the epoch there is perceived the precarious or simple car equipment that Chileans were having in that epoch in which the cars of luxury were the Dodge Dart Chrysler (assembled in the northern port of Arica) and the Peugeot 404 (assembled in Los Andes, 100 kms. from Santiago). The car of the well-off middle class was the Fiat 125 and en their juvenile sectors the ideal was a Mini Austin 850. In the installed middle class there were meeting old Renault 4S (the "renolas" o "renoletas"), VW beetles, Simca 1000 and principally the popular one Citroen 2CV, known like "citroneta" o "citrola". The movie allows to see brief the juvenile or young faces of approximately 30 actors, the majority today mature and well known and to wonder for the identities of others that probably retired, they did not come back from exile or were murdered or disappear during the dictatorship. In short an intelligent and nervous "thriller", in "Z" style, which showing the hard political reality of Uruguay between 1970 and 1972. The film allows a nostalgic look and indicative on the Chile that was on the way to disappear due the Coup d'Etat of 11 of september, 1973.