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Dir. Errol Morris
Rating: 7.0 | 0 User Reviews | Send to Friend
A chilling companion piece to 2007's slightly superior Taxi to the Darkside, esteemed documentary director Errol Morris' latest film explores the factors that made the sadistic and outrageous human abuse at Abu Ghraib possible. Surprisingly, with the exception of a brief photo appearance by Donald Rumsfeld, then the US Secretary of Defense, the film never particularly lays out a case against the government and doesn't really take to task either of the two highest ranking culprits for the prison debacle. Rather, Morris has kept his trademark dead-on interviews with the MIs and staff sergeants who eventually took the fall for the incident, including the notorious Lynndie England, of the famous thumbs-up smile. Intercut with these pieces are dramatic -- and often stunning -- metaphoric cutaways utilizing super slow motion cameras positioned at a macro level on the particular details of his subjects, be they a grizzled eyebrow being shaved off, a single playing card falling to a table or a shower nozzle exploding in water. Morris also takes special notice of the various photographs smuggled out of the prison -- what originally alerted the New York Times and then the rest of the world to the horrors the Americans were perpetrating on their detainees. Indeed, in more than one interview, the idea of the photographs is brought up continually. One military criminal investigator says the photos were the "mistake" the guards made, what allowed them to be caught; another former MP suggests that far worse takes place every day, but without the photographic evidence to prove it, there is no punishment meted out. What we come away with -- again, much like Taxi -- is the sense of how little any of the guards at Abu Ghraib actually were trained in interrogation. One experienced interrogator Morris interviews is still incensed at how badly the whole operation went, not the least of which, how little usable information was ever extracted from these beaten, humiliated, brutalized prisoners. England's dimwitted interjection -- "We didn't kill 'em” -- aside, the film avoids easy finger pointing. Everyone now knows under whose orders these military underlings were performing these atrocities, and even if their standard excuses of 'just following orders' rings hollow, we might eventually come to look at this period of time as the beginning of the end of the American Empire.
Blu-ray bonus features include director commentary; interview footage featuring Tim Dugan, Hydrue Joyner, and Steven Jordan; L.A. Premiere Q&A with Errol Morris and nine additional scenes.
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