"Fatwa" wants you to believe that it is a sobering and thrilling story about an Arab-American who intends to carry out a terrorist plot. What it really is, though, is a tawdry direct-to-video crapfest about Lauren Holly having tawdry sex with AJ Quartermaine from "General Hospital."

The terrorism truly does play second fiddle to the central story of Lauren Holly doing whatever the hell it is she's doing. Overwrought, melodramatic and harshly lit (everyone in this film looks 10 years older than they are), she plays Maggie Davidson, a U.S. senator who talks tough on terrorism and in her off hours loves violent, smutty sex with Vince (Billy Warlock), who might be some kind of congressional aide or something. Her husband (John Doman) hates her and wants her dead -- and has ties to the sort of people who can make that happen. (One of them is his brother, which is handy.) Their teenage daughter Cassie (Rachel Miner) does cocaine with an Israeli girl (Lacey Chabert), and they get their product from a Libyan cab driver named Samir (Roger Guenveur Smith), who is dabbling in terrorism in his spare time.

These people are all more connected to each other than they ought to be, and even after the story has completely unraveled itself, I'm still not sure what the scheme was. These guys are trying to kill that person -- but why? And that guy wants that woman dead -- but what was his plan, exactly? The film, written by Scott Schafer and directed by John Carter, both newcomers, has its bad guys perpetrating one of those elaborate plans where about a million coincidences have to happen just right in order for it to work. Cassie wants cocaine, Maggie is taking a cab from the airport, her husband is despondent and bitter -- are we to understand Samir knew all this and used it to his advantage? If all terrorists have that much foresight, we're in trouble.

The performances are uniformly terrible, often laughably so, as when a horrified Maggie screams at Samir, "You're not justified! You're not justified! You're not justified!" You will also enjoy the angry husband's sinister, cheesy attempt to hire a hitman:

"I need somebody ... I'm not sure how to say this...."
"Removed?"
"Something like that."

Yet I must declare Elizabeth Uhl as a diner waitress named Sandy as the single most grating and laugh-out-loud BAD performance in the film. Her arch inflections and overdone gestures are the stuff of "Mystery Science Theater 3000." If she were in black and white, you'd assume she had stumbled in from a Roger Corman movie.

The film is pretty clear on what point it was trying to make: Terrorists hate us, but we should all try to get along. America is ostentatious while much of the world is poor. Yada yada yada. I submit that if the film had spent more than five minutes addressing these themes, it might have gotten further with it. But when 90 percent of your movie is devoted to Lauren Holly's husband wanting to kill her and Lauren Holly herself demanding that her boy toy strangle her during fornication, you shouldn't be surprised when the finished product looks like a basic-cable movie of the week.

THE DVD

There are no alternate language tracks and no subtitles.

VIDEO: The film looks grainy and almost monochromatic, apparently intentionally. The DVD transfer is mediocre at best, with a lot of dull, washed out colors and sharp edges. It's non-anamorphic widescreen (1.85:1).

AUDIO: Available in Dolby Digital 2.0 or 5.1. Both sound decent, considering it's a cheap film gone straight to DVD. The basses are often too low and muddy, but the overall mix is good.

EXTRAS: Just one: a commentary by director John Carter and writer Scott Schafer. They were evidently sitting in a well when the commentary was recorded, but never mind the echo. Focus instead on the ludicrous confidence they express in their very, very lousy product. "This is the very best telling of the story we could do," Schafer says, and means it as a proud declaration of achievement.

Carter and Schafer seem to think the movie actually addresses the issue of terrorism, jabbering on about the subject even when the movie has careened way off track (where it stays for most of the running time). They have nothing interesting to say about how the film was made, though they sure are pleased with themselves. Good for them, I guess.

(Also: Schafer pronounces "occidentalism" as "oxen-dentalism." Awesome!)

IN SUMMARY

This is a non-thrilling thriller that claims to be about current events but is really the same old crap about money, greed and cheating spouses. It may be good for a few unintentional laughs, but that's about it.