SOURCE: Kehr, Dave. Review of Besieged, by Bernardo Bertolucci. Film Comment 35, no. 2 (March 1999): 6.

In the following review, Kehr asserts that the simplicity and intimacy of Besieged proves Bertolucci's maturity as a filmmaker.

The past twenty years have witnessed a gradual globalization of the movies, which has mainly taken the form of Hollywood gobbling up all of the eccentric, individual national cinemas that once made up the rich fabric of the art. Clearly, the global march of Stallone, Schwarzenegger, and the rest of the Hollywood action figures (Joe Dante's Small Soldiers provides a nice visual metaphor) has succeeded in wiping out most of the popular cinema in its few remaining strongholds. The genre cinema in Europe is long gone, Asia is crumbling fast, and even India, long protected by its maze of dialects and cultural peculiarities, is said to be teetering on the brink, ready to surrender the tattered...