| |  | DVD : Taxi To the Dark Side |  | | | | | | | | | |
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Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Binding: DVD
EAN: 0014381494020
Label: Velocity / Thinkfilm
Manufacturer: Velocity / Thinkfilm
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Velocity / Thinkfilm
Region Code: 1
Release Date: September 30, 2008
Running Time: 106 minutes
Sales Rank: 493
Studio: Velocity / Thinkfilm
Theatrical Release Date: 2007
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Editorial Review:
Album Description:
Oscarr-nominated director Alex Gibney (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room) investigates the torture and killing of an innocent Afghani taxi driver in this gripping probe into reckless abuses of government power. Disturbing and incisive, the Academy Awardr-winner Taxi To The Dark Side incorporates rare and never-before-seen images from inside the Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan and Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay prisons into its exposure of the Bush administration's 'global war on terror.' This stunningly crafted narrative demonstrates how this one man's life and death symbolizes the erosion of our civil rights and how what it means to be an American has changed forever.
Amazon.com:
Among the slew of documentaries inspired by the post-9/11 war, arguably none is more important than Alex Gibney's Taxi to the Dark Side. The story it has to tell, with compelling thoroughness and no recourse to rhetoric, should be as disturbing to Americans supporting the war as it is to opponents. In December 2002, Dilawar, a young rural Afghan cabdriver, was accused of helping to plan a rocket attack on a U.S. base, clamped into prison at Bagram, and subjected to physical torture so relentless that he died after two days of it. But Dilawar was innocent--and he'd been denounced by the real culprit, who thereby took the heat off himself and won points with U.S. forces by giving them 'a bad guy.' Dilawar was the first fatal victim of Vice President Dick Cheney's devotion to 'working the dark side'--torturing, humiliating, and otherwise abusing prisoners in the 'Global War on Terror.' His story, developed in horrific detail with testimony from the soldiers who tortured him, and also from two New York Times investigative reporters, becomes a prism for slanting light onto the 'dark side' policy and the mindset behind it. The program at Bagram was deemed such a success that it served as the model for Abu Graibh the following year in Iraq, and both prisons became pipelines to the detainee facility at Guantánamo, Cuba.
The film's impact is powerful and complex. We come to see the very soldiers who broke Dilawar's body and spirit as victims, too--and patsies of a policy that, from Cheney and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on down, ignored the Geneva Convention and shrouded itself (and commanding officers) in 'a fog of ambiguity' while the grunts took the fall. A lot of these grunts testify here, and the accumulation of their individual perspectives on a shared tragedy is devastating. The latter half of the film features penetrating commentary from critics of torture as a policy (Senator John McCain was still one at the time), all of whom agree that it doesn't work and it only damages us. And for Theatre of the Absurd, there's a PR tour of (a discrete portion of) the Guantánamo facility, which turns out to be kinda like summer camp: 'They get ice cream on Sundays.' Finally, Taxi to the Dark Side isn't about torture or politics or the justness or unjustness of the war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Gibney is entirely correct when he says, 'It's really about the American character and whether we have become something rather different from what we imagine ourselves to be.' He's asking; he doesn't want it to be true.--Richard T. Jameson
Customer Reviews Average Rating: 
Rating: - "God Mend Thy Every Flaw"/"Do the Ends Justify the Means?"
`Taxi to the Dark Side' is an eye-opener.Starting with the case of Dilawar, a taxi driver from Afghanistan, the documentary traces the lives of terrorist suspects imprisoned in Bagram in Afghanistan; Abu Graib in Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay, in Cuba.Showing ample evidence of beatings and abuse, the film has several photographs and much testimony with which to work.
Among the interviewees are some of the suspects who were either court marshaled or imprisoned for their offenses when ... Read More
Rating: - the horror
"Be careful when you fight the monsters, lest you become one."
Friedrich Nietzsche
Well that quote came to mind as I watched this depressing 2007 Academy Award Winner directed by Alex Gibney (ENRON: THE SMARTEST GUYS IN THE ROOM -also excellent). This time Gibney explores America's journey into darkness that is the so-called "war on terror" (BTW people, when you hear the words "war on" before anything you can bet it is a total disaster.). I was reminded of Nietzsche's warning ... Read More
Rating: - Be Prepared to Seriously Reconsider Your Complacency
About the only nice thing you can say about this administration after viewing this film is that you could probably not have made a similar expose about the treatment of prisoners in concentration camps in Nazi Germany during WWII. Still, it's a shame that we have to look to Nazi Germany to find a government that treated its enemies more despicably or a society more complacent about the heinous crimes committed by their government in their name.
Rating: - Leaning In the Right Direction
I rather enjoy this style of documentary.
In my experience documentaries have two faces;
an opinionated narrator with an obvious agenda who either alienates you or pushes you into their mindset, or
an educational narrator who may lean in one direction yet is more concerned with understanding and empathy.
This documentary educates the viewer on the various forms of "interrogation" we have developed over the years in a precise and methodical manner.The underlying ... Read More
Rating: - Difficult to Watch, Important Polemical Documentary Critical of Torture Used by American Soliders
Having seen "Taxi to the Dark Side" nearly three weeks ago at a private screening in midtown Manhattan, my mind is still reeling from the harsh, brutal images of torture committed by United States soldiers against suspected terrorists and irregulars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. This may be the most important documentary film on the "War on Terror", and while it is a liberal polemic film, it does an effective job of arguing its case by showing its graphic images, instead of having someone ... Read More
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