A matter of morality: Theft is not unthinkable

June 17, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

By Patrick Goldstein

McClatchy Newspapers

How’s this for a true Hollywood mystery? Last week, when I visited the Internet Movie Data Base’s Movie Meter, which ranks the hottest films and TV shows of the moment in terms of searches by IMDb users, I found a movie ranked No. 4 — higher than “Get Him to the Greek,” “Shrek Forever After,” “Robin Hood” or “Glee” — that isn’t even playing in theaters and hadn’t been released on home video.

Called “Unthinkable,” the film stars Sam Jackson as an enigmatic former Army interrogator brought in to question a U.S.-born Muslim terrorist, played by Michael Sheen, who has planted nuclear devices in three American cities. With the clock ticking and FBI, military and CIA operatives on hand angrily debating the wisdom of his actions, the film focuses on just how far Jackson’s character should go in terms of brutal interrogation tactics to force the terrorist to reveal where he has placed the bombs.

The movie, which I saw at a screening the other night, isn’t for the squeamish, since Jackson’s character has no scruples about what extreme methods he’d use to get the information he needs. But it’s fascinating to see a film that offers a graphic depiction of an issue — the use of torture to gain invaluable information — that is normally only debated on the op-ed pages.

In fact, if you go to the IMDb message boards, you’ll see an incredibly lively, intellectually stimulating debate about the movie’s depiction of Jackson’s character’s techniques, with some people appalled by his actions, others convinced that what he did was necessary to save millions of people’s lives. Under normal circumstances, “Unthinkable” producer Cotty Chubb would be delighted to see that his film has provoked such an intense storm of discussion.

The reason “Unthinkable” has drawn all this attention is because a pristine digital copy of the film surfaced on the Internet late last month, which in turn was quickly made available on a variety of torrent-style downloading sites. So all of the enthusiastic fans who’ve been debating the merits of the film are arguing over a movie they’ve seen for free. “Unthinkable” will be available in video stores this week, distributed by Sony Home Video, but since untold thousands of Web-savvy fans have been able to watch the film online for the past two weeks, it’s unclear whether the movie’s sales will be helped or hurt by the free exposure.

“I’ve been unbelievably torn over the whole thing,” says Chubb, best-known for having produced such films as “Eve’s Bayou,” “Dark Blue” and “To Sleep With Anger.” “It’s tremendous to go on IMDb and see that our user rating is 7.3, which is the highest rating of any movies in the current Top 10 there — you have to go down to ‘Iron Man 2’ to find a higher rating. But on the other hand, while everyone is debating all these important moral questions, I want to ask them another important question — hey, guys, what about the morality of watching this movie on the Internet for free?”

So how did “Unthinkable” end up in such a strange state of affairs? It has a fascinating back story. Back in 2006, an agent gave Chubb the original script, written by the British actor-writer Peter Woodward. Fascinated by the script’s compelling story line, Chubb got the movie set up at Sidney Kimmel’s production company, where it attracted a director, Tarsem Singh, and a star, Forest Whitaker. But Kimmel ended up getting out of the business, and by the time Chubb had a new draft of the script, Singh and Whitaker had moved on.

Chubb says he has no idea how the film found its way onto the Internet, undercutting its straight-to-video release. “It certainly didn’t come from the editing room, since we’d already been shut down. So your guess is as good as mine.”