Putting "September Eleven" in the title of your film pretty much assures that viewers are going to be thinking of one thing. Yet director Renzo Martinelli's historical epic is not about the al-Qaida terror attacks of 2001, but the siege of Vienna in 1683, where the Holy Roman Empire and its catholic allies from Poland and Lithuania saved Europe from a much larger invading army of Ottoman Turks, bent on erecting a mosque in the heart of Christendom.
Actually, the climax of the monthslong siege — a cavalry charge by Polish lancers that routed the Turks — happened on Sep. 12, but why quibble about details when the aim of your film is to show that Islam has always been out to get the West? It's exactly the sort of historical grievance (along with the Crusades) cooler heads were trying to avoid in the years following 9/11, to keep the extremists on both sides from inflating the crisis into a full-blown war of civilizations.
Directed and co-written by Martinelli, the Italian-Polish co-production, "The Day of the Siege: September Eleven 1683" makes a half-hearted attempt to show how brave all sides were, and how convinced they were of their own righteousness as they set out to exterminate each other.