It’s hard to watch the trailer for Unthinkable and think of anything except the partisan political debate over water boarding. It’s as if they took that complex issue and turned it into a liberalized version of 24. It seems as though Sam Jackson, who’s cast in the role of a man torturing a terrorist to discover the location of nuclear bombs, is being cast as the villain here. To me the trailer actually feels as if it sympathizes more with Sheen, playing the terrorist. It’s as if someone watched an episode of The Daily Show and saw a conservative pundit justify torture using the ticking bomb scenario, and then decided to write a movie to prove them wrong.

Normally I’m on board with anything which involves Sam Jackson yelling at or otherwise being mean to people (and it really doesn’t get any meaner than torture), but in this case anyone who’s ever watched the news will be far too distracted by the real-life political overtones which almost certainly must have inspired it, to enjoy it. Besides, the whole torture debate is so 2009… and who casts a British guy as a terrorist? I smell an agenda. Every time someone ponders the moral implications of torture in this trailer just shout “I have had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane!” at the screen, and the whole thing will seem better.

Check out the first trailer for Unthinkable below.