One Jihadist After Another

Distribution Service: Daily Wire +
MPAA Rating: R
Reel Rating: 3 out of 5 reels

Run Hide Fight: Infidels has two main goals. The first is to make a fun, hard R, 80s style action movie about patriotic, vigilante Americans kicking ass against evil terrorists to save the innocent. The second, more subtle aim is providing potent commentary against the odd relationship between leftist politics and radical Islamic philosophy. It succeeds in both, more the former than latter.

Clay Sanders (Johnathon Majors) is a Delta Force operative in Iraq searching for a top ISIS commander. He finds and apprehends the target, but his best friend is killed in the mission. A decade later, Sanders is scheduled to give a speech at Laughton University in Virgina, promoting a book on his experiences. His friend’s son Devlin (JC Kilcoyne), a student there, blames Clay for his father’s death but attends the lecture anyway with the hope of seeing Lizzy (Tyler Aser), his crush. Opposing the event is a group of progressive students who first set up a makeshift camp in the quad. When that doesn’t work, they barricade the student union, refusing to let anyone enter or exit. Unfortunately, this plays right into the hands of a group of terrorists led by Ibrahim (Stephen Hailo), the son of the ISIS leader captured by Clay. While two of his comrades shoot students from a tower, he takes nearly a hundred others hostage, demanding the release of his father and among other nefarious purposes.

The first few scenes of Infidels are filled with clever though somewhat awkward humor. When Ibrahim is hired as a janitor by a female staffer, he refuses to shake her hand since she is female. Being a good liberal, she waves it off and even apologizes for not understanding his culture. Farrah (Charlotte Riggs), the leader of the progressive student movement, wears a keffiyeh and screams about stolen land into a megaphone, oblivious to the fact she is preventing her fellow college students from using their own tuition funded facilities. This exemplifies the tone of film, which takes its cue from Topic Thunder and DailyWire’s previous Lady Ballers which always remains light on its feet and injects dark humor into even the worst circumstances, making a terrible reality palatable through entertainment. It’s a technique that even Jesus used in a 1^st century roast battle with the Syrophoenician woman, employing foul language as a demonstration that the Kingdom of God was open to even Israel’s historic enemies.

Even before the film was released, critics were labeling the production Islamophobic, a charge for which the producers were well prepared. The easy way to dismiss this claim is to correctly assert that the villains are not simply Muslims but foreign Jihadist terrorists in the same vein as the hyperbolic bad guys in Die Hard, Red Dawn, and Air Force One. Yet Infidels goes deeper than this. They didn’t choose to create a fake radical group but instead cast them as part of ISIS, which is still committing terrorist attacks today a decade after losing their temporary country in the Middle East. Ibrahim criticizes a soldier for eating food that isn’t haram, stops everything to pray towards Mecca, and has the young women captives purify themselves by showering before dressing them in burkas and offering them up to his comrades as ma malakat aymanukum, aka sex slaves. Their language, mannerisms, and techniques are also taken directly from real events and Wahhabi policies; the filmmakers have clearly done their homework. To be fair, the average Muslim living the United States doesn’t act like this, and a popcorn action flick is not an avenue for a serious discussion about the relationship between Islam and terrorism. However, a person who might never think of these issues but does enjoy such a film might be intrigued enough to investigate the situation.

Nearly all the vitriol against this film online has focused on its portrayal of Islam, but it’s the political Left who is the real target of Infidels’ ire. The progressive students, who constantly use the language of the DSA, is a hodgepodge group of extremists who promote LGBT rights, climate justice, slavery reparations, land acknowledges, and many more. Palestinian liberation is simply bycatch in the blue net. This is not only unwise but deadly. In the film’s most controversial scene, Ibrahim graphically murders two gay students. “We are on your side,” they cry. “You are impure,” he hisses before putting their blood all over the pavement. This is a tragic but necessary reality for the students to face. Jihadists have no interest in liberal policies but will gladly use the money and publicity given to them.

This scene also illustrates something important that is often missed in a film like this. Despite choosing the wrong side, the audience is invited to sympathize with Farrah and her friends. No one on the political Right would believe these students “deserved” their fate. The filmmakers argue that it would be much safer for America if both the Right and Left fought these evil men who hate both of us, like Republican and Democratic attitudes towards the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The last time I remember feeling like this was the death of Osama Bin Laden in 2011; I’d like to feel it again.

Sadly missing from the film is any real engagement with the Christian faith or genuine religious practice. At one point, a terrorist demands that everyone proclaim that Allah is God and Mohammad is a Prophet. “I can’t say that. I’m a Christian,” one student whispers. “Just pretend, God will understand” her friend whispers back. Yet the audience never sees the student’s decision or its consequences. We know from recent history that terrorists have demanded Christians renounce Christ, creating new saints in their wake like the 21 Coptic martyrs and Servant of God Jacques Hamel. Yet the students do show Christian virtues like courage, determination, and self-sacrifice. There’s even a scene where a security guard subdues a terrorist who is about to kill a woman who has just given birth.

It is 100% true that Infidels is continuously hyperbolic and occasionally stereotypical, and it must be admitted that good guys are not always charitable or reverent. However, there is another film that has almost the exact same narrative, tone, and political simplification but the inverse cultural leaning. That film was One Battle After Another, which won last year’s Academy Award for Best Picture. It will be an interesting litmus test to see how Hollywood treats this objectively better film, but I’m not holding my breath.

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