Samuel L Jackson gives an excellent if frightening performance here as an interrogator outside the system who will stop at nothing to get his results because the stakes are so high we can and will justify absolutely anything.

A terrorist has placed 3 nuclear bombs in 3 different cities all set to go off if his demands are not met. He then allows himself to be caught and interrogated. His purpose in that seems to be to hold up a mirror to his captives and show them that they too become the enemy when the pressure is enough and the stakes are high enough.

With the lives of millions possibly hanging in the balance Jackson as the interrogator is allowed and even forced to go to extremes in torturing his prisoner to obtain the location of the bombs before they go off.

The questions both stated and implied by this movie could be taken from the news headlines of the last several years. The answers to the questions are so esoteric yet so basic that they can never be completely answered. When is torture justified? When do the special circumstances and the risk of loss out weigh the rule of law and even our trappings of humanity? If the risk if the loss of millions of lives, how far can we go, how far should we go, how far will we go?