TAXI TO THE DARK SIDE

Reviewed for CompuServe by Harvey S. Karten
THINKFilm
Grade: B+
Directed by: Alex Gibney
Written By: Alex Gibney
Cast: Moazzam Begg, Willie Brand, Jack Cloonan, Damien Corsetti, Ken Davis, Carlotta Gall, Tim Golden, Scott Horton, Tony Lagouranis, Carl Levin, Alfred McCoy, Alberto Mora, Anthony Morden, Glendale Walls, lawrence Wilkerson, Tim Wilner, John Yoo, Alex Gibney
Screened at: Review 2, NYC, 12/10/07
Opens: January 18, 2008

Most of us consider ourselves good people, against brutality and torture. But let’s say you’re asked the typical question designed to elicit a “Hmm, let’s see,” response. “You have in custody a guy who is probably a terrorist who has information about a bomb about to go off within a week. The bomb could kill a hundred people if it is allowed to detonate. This fellow will not divulge the location of the bomb but we think we can force it out of him by waterboarding, or beating him severely. Can we sacrifice this one man and in return save a hundred innocent people?” I dare say that most of us would say, “Yeah, if you put it that way, OK.”

According to Alex Gibney’s well edited, well thought-out documentary against the use of torture, beating prisoners is not only morally and legally repugnant—against the Geneva Convention and opposed to everything the United States should stand for—but it simply does not work. Therefore he would answer the above question, “Certainly not.” As he states in the press notes and in the movie as well, prisoners who are put under extreme duress whether handcuffed to the ceiling and forced to stand still for hours on end or put into sensory deprivation cells for days; bombarded with loud music or dragged around naked on dog leashes by women; waterboarded, i.e. given the feeling that they are drowning; grossly humiliated by any means devised by their captors—will either die rather than succumb or simply give out false information. The worst example of that latter occurred when one such captive told the Americans what they wanted to hear; that Saddam Hussein was working closely with Al Queda. That was America’s Gulf of Tonkin incident; its sinking of the Maine; its excuse to invade Iraq. And it was totally false. A better way to get information is to establish rapport, since prisoners, like the Japanese who were captured by Americans during World War II, are people too with hopes and dreams and wives and children just like people everywhere. Expert interrogators are required. You’ll get what you need.

While “Taxi to the Dark Side” reaches far into prisons in Afghanistan (Bagram Air Force base), Iraq (Abu Ghraib) and Cuba (Guantanamo), the title taxi belonged to an innocent cab driver who died five days after being taken into custody at Bagram for the “crime” of taking three “fares” back to his village in the new cab he was so proud of owning. This fellow, Dilawar, was thought to have led a team in a rocket attack. At the air force base at Bagram, he was so beaten about both legs that if he lived, his limbs would have had to be amputated. Using Dilawar for individual human interest, Gibney launches his own series of attacks, using a large number of gruesome photographs of naked and humiliated Arab prisoners in poses from crouching and huddling against one another to being handcuffed to the ceiling while standing on a box, terrified that if they moved they would be electrocuted.

By interviewing people both on the side of the current administration, who verbally do not condone torture, and those opposing what they say is actually going on against what America stands for morally, legally and even in terms of good common sense, he adds layer upon layer of evidence to convince the audience that American values have become corrupted –and for what? We’re not even winning the war as a result!

As usual the officer class get off without a problem, while those are just following orders are imprisoned, discharged dishonorably, and have trouble finding jobs on the outside. As for the prisoners—even if they are guilty, one cannot justify the way they have been treated. Gibney believes that the vast majority, who are being kept for years without trial at the three aforementioned facilities, are innocent. They have been arrested just like those who were picked up by the Spanish Inquisition centuries ago—through the testimony of informers, in this case simply by Afghan citizens who receive cash for turning people in. Even the guy who fingered Dilawar was busted himself shortly after the taxi-driver’s death.

Interviewees include several soldiers on the level of private, with commentaries by former Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, President Bush, and Vice President Dick Cheney.

Rated R. 106 minutes © 2007 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online