From the producer of Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room and Who Killed the Electric Car? comes a documentary that takes a critical look at the Bush administration's policy on torture by investigating the death of an Afghan taxi driver who, after being taken into the custody of American soldiers at Bagram Air Force base, suffered fatal injuries at the hands of U.S. soldiers. In 2002, American soldiers accused an Afghan taxi driver of taking part in a deadly rocket attack. Five days after being handed over to the US military for questioning, the man was found dead - the victim of a brutal bout of torture and abuse according to the medical examiner who inspected his body. According to the examiner, the taxi driver's hands had been bound to the ceiling, forcing him to stand for hours on end as his assailants repeatedly - and relentlessly - kicked him. Compelled to finally unearth the truth about the mysterious fate of the deceased taxi driver, filmmaker Alex Gibney takes viewers on an illuminating journey from a tiny Afghani village to Guantanamo Bay, to Abu Ghriab, and ultimately the White House to explore why the man who turned up in the morgue wasn't the only victim to fall prey to the Bush administration's controversial foreign policy. By examining the sad fate of the wrongly accused, the toll that the War on Terror has taken on an exhausted United States military, and Justice Department Official John Yoo's internal memo concerning interrogation techniques, the filmmakers behind Taxi to the Dark Side encourage viewers to weigh out the issues for themselves, and never accept what's told to them on face value. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
Review by All Movie Guide
All Movie Guide
liked it.
It would be tempting to describe the Oscar-winning documentary Taxi to the Dark Side as "devastating" if it weren't for the dispassionate approach Alex Gibney takes to the material. That's not to say the film lacks passion, but merely that emotional manipulation is not among Gibney's goals. The director of Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room has assembled an extensively researched, sober, and straightforward presentation of the facts related to the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandals, and others that occurred under the watch of American troops in the Middle East and Guantanamo Bay. His film also reveals the success of the PR campaign designed to blame the smallest cogs in the machine, designed to dismiss them as "bad apples." The malevolent glee in some soldiers' eyes, made famous by the notorious Abu Ghraib photos, may inspire outrage. But Gibney's interviews make it clear that these men and women were indoctrinated into a multi-faceted program for extracting information from enemy combatants. To question it would have run contrary to everything they were taught about following orders, but this rationalization didn't save them from prison sentences, public disgrace, and private disillusionment. Taxi to the Dark Side provides numerous opportunities to ball one's fists at the policies and attitudes of the Bush administration, which seem to have directly resulted in spawning new terrorists. But again, Gibney lets the facts speak for themselves, rather than engaging in a
Michael Moore-style hatchet job. With
Enron and now Taxi to the Dark Side, Gibney has emerged as one of the most prominent investigators of systemic corruption among documentary filmmakers. If his film is not as shocking as it might have once been, that's a statement on modern media saturation and our collective loss of innocence, rather than on the stark dehumanization explored here. ~ Derek Armstrong, All Movie Guide