IN THE LINE OF DUTY: SIEGE AT MARION (1992) **1/2 There's a distinct feel that this was made for the consumption of the downtrodden and oppressed, to be viewed on television screens in trailer parks from Tennessee to Colorado, Louisiana to Illinois. Not as a warning, or a call to arms-it's not propaganda of any apparent sort-but simply because that's where they figure the demographic lies, after the Busch beer runs out for the evening. Which is too bad, not only that they thought that, but also that they're probably right. I mean, what sensible, respectable person has time to wonder about a bunch of excommunicated Mormon loony survivalists, hiding out on the farm and blowing up the church that threw them out? It's too bad that society spends so much time fixated on those who mutually work the system, at the expense of people like these, who have been left behind. Would they have been dangerous if left alone? Probably, maybe even obviously. Were they trying to do what they thought was right? Definitely, on both sides. Is there something inherently nutty about doing what you think that God wants you to? The societal consensus answer is apparently "Yes, if it brings down the weight of the government onto you." But isn't history full of adored martyrs? Adored maybe, but they're not adored so much that it's a major offered in any university. I have to say that when I see a big governmental apparatus "doing its job" by bullying a family of people trying to do what they think that God wants them to, my heart goes out to the nuts. Just look at Tess Harper's eyes-they're not as out there as Karen Black's, but this is more often viewed as a film on psychological irregularity than cosmological horror. I think that's probably right, mainly, but there are also plenty of subtexts on man's capacity for cruelty to his own.
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