Indiana who? While many of America's moviegoers are awaiting the return of Harrison Ford to play the fedora-clad archaeological find - I mean, archaeologist - a little film by a first-time Dutch filmmaker is stealing the front-page hype.

We're talking Fitma here, a tawdry bit of movie producing that has excited few beyond the paranoid and has even "draw[n] muted response from Muslims," surely a bummer to muckraking conservative politico-cum-Spielberg Geert Wilders.

Though it's easy to assume (and equally simple to be found correct in said assumption) that the 15-minute short is little more than sensationalist tripe, Fitma is fit to serve as a study in propaganda filmmaking. How does Wilders' work stack up against other such exercises as, say, Triumph of the Will or Birth of a Nation or JFK?

The MPR assessment: Not well. While remaining consistent of tone in the manner of all proper propaganda flicks, the film's style - or lack thereof - is utterly the opposite. Over the first two-thirds of the film, a motif is established wherein a passage from the Koran is displayed on-screen and read in its original Arabic. Chasing this is mostly news footage in the aftermath of terrorist attacks; Wilders has realized that gobs of lively red blood and gore is fantastic in fostering rubbernecking audiences with the additional bonus of attention from the Faces of Death and horror film fanatic demographics.

What is most interesting about Fitna as work of propaganda is its saving aesthetic grace. Once Wilders and/or Wilders' scriptwriter somehow runs out of material from the Koran at about 7:30 into the film, Fitna's imagery is immediately at odds with the message. Once the Netherlands fall "under the spell of Islam," it appears that bleak and dreary cities will be architecturally enlivened with shiny, colorful, lively new mosques constructed amidst the grayness. See the scenes of burqa-wearing women decked out with all the lifestyle accoutrement of Western Europe, financially bonded like the rest of us by the dominant culture. Um, what's the problem here?

When cityscapes and political/religious fanatics are not being presented as mainstream Islam, some imagery works against the film's rhythm, functioning as stoppers. Bloody images of bodies laid out could be from any war, any military action - "US-backed action, perhaps...?" one wonders, attention wandering. And is that the Klinghoffer incident in there? Is that a re-creation or were there really video cameras on board the Achille Lauro in 1985? It's presented as actual footage...

Even more counterproductive is Wilders' careful stripping of capitalization from "Muslim" and "Islam" in every subtitle; did he think the average filmgoer would be too stupid to notice? After a little classic lying with statistics, the film stylistically spins out of control with the politician's second-rate views presented with equal weight to the Koran verses and tabloid headlines.

Choices such as these have helped morph Fitna from propaganda exercise to portrait of a demagogue in the style of Oliver Stone's most extreme excesses. In the end, Fitna fails: The wave of paranoia and political action Wilders hoped to achieve with his first foray into filmmaking seems unlikely, as this messily crafted movie will inspire few YouTubers and Europeans to do more than search for the next online video, perhaps something from Al-Jazeera or on 9/11 conspiracies.

Good luck with Fitna II, Mr. Wilders; perhaps you should watch a few Leni Riefenstahl films first...