[frereubu]

I thought of it as satirising the picture painted by the security services of terrorist groups as Mission Impossible-type bad guys who were amazingly organised and professional, so they needed loads of money for counter terrorism. Don't get me wrong, I do value (some of) the work of the security services, but I think this kind of portrayal too easily allows people to ignore the fact that "terrorists" are often just directionless people drawn into that kind of world almost by accident. The Day Shall Come, released nine years later, expands on that idea.

[cm2187]

I am not sure you can get that message from the movie. In the end it does show them as dangerous, murdurous criminals. It doesn't take a PhD or lots of means to kill a large number of people. Which is also the difficult challenge posed to those security services.

[frereubu]

I didn't (intentionally) say they didn't end up as dangerous, murderous criminals. I said that they were directionless people - they weren't criminal masterminds in a glamorous world of high-tech equiment and fast cars, they were tragic characters who got sucked into a farcial which saw someone blow themselves up in a shopping precinct while dressed as a chicken. It's a fundamentally humanising film which hints at the reasons people join those kinds of organisations, which are much less high-tech and organised than the security services (intentionally or otherwise) paint them as.