The Indian film A Wednesday poses an interesting contrast to the American film Body of Lies. Both films deal with terrorism, but the main character in each film is significantly different and deals with a different set of problems. In A Wednesday, the nameless "common man" is affiliated with no one. He is not part of an agency attempting to combat terrorism, nor does he have a vast network of operatives that are working with him. Instead, he is simply an everyday guy who has taken it upon himself to defeat terrorism in India because he sees that the authorities are doing a miserable job of it. He points out that they take 10 years to convict someone, and in the meantime terrorism continues.
On its surface, the common man's effort to defeat terrorism seems hopeless. What can one man with no operatives accomplish all by himself? Yet this man is extraordinarily well equipped to carry out the operation. He devises a complex and intelligently crafted plan that he executes from the roof of a building, undetected. To keep from being tracked by cell phone, he uses the sim cards of deceased individuals, one after another. He may have been a spy or a technology expert in a previous occupation, and he is adept at getting the authorities to do exactly what he wants while remaining undetected and inaccessible.
What is interesting about this character is that he has singlehandedly mounted a successful campaign to rid his city of terrorism, making the police look like incompetent buffoons for not being able to do the same despite their far larger manpower and the resources at their disposal. Like Peter Finch's character in Network, who utters the famous line, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore," the nameless common man decides to stand up against the status quo that leaves him fearful of riding the train and concerned about the safety of his family and simply take a stand to do something a
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