Well executed summary of the US' history of torture starting in Afghanistan and leading to the policy in Iraq. But I was never engaged emotionally, nor interested philosophically. It's not smug. It's not super partisan. But it's just not much of anything.
There are so many competing documentaries that tell similar stories. I will say that this is a good overview if you want to show it to your sophomore civics class, but otherwise it's pretty boring.
Unlike Standard Operating Procedures, directed by Errol Morris, "Taxi..." encompasses much more than Abu Ghraib. And it includes press conferences and government documents to back up the soldiers' stories about the intentionally poor oversight and regulation of torture. But the interviews aren't compelling. I wasn't affected by any one person because there are many, many interviews, all of which are 2 minutes at the max (I'm guessing, I didn't really measure), and are so intercut with others that it's difficult to make a connection with anyone, even the dead man who this movie follows from his village taxi service in Afghanistan to his murder at Bagram.
Unlike "Why We Fight", this film is limited in its scope and doesn't attempt a philosophical exploration of how we got into this and why, but rather says that the torture on "24" has prepared the US society for accepting torture and gives very little explanation of the motivations of Dick Cheyney and Donald Rumsfeld, other than PR and carelessness.
Taxi... does include an interview with John Yoo, legal adviser to President Bush and author of the "torture memo". He's one slippery cat. He claims that there's no advantage to imprisoning innocent people for years in Guantanamo and so therefore it must not happen. That's some poor logic from a UC Berkeley law professor. I think I'd rather have some added safe guards in place beyond it just not being a good use of resources to imprison and torture people for years with out trial.
Because there isn't enough material to make the story all about the taxi driver, Dilawar (only three photos are used of him that were taken prior to his death), it includes interviews and a short history of the torture policies of the Bush administration. So it starts with a human story with a face and then disappears for an hour into Iraq and Abu Ghraib, all of which has been covered better in other films, and then comes back to Dilawar's death and explains that he was so badly beaten and forced to stand for long periods with no sleep that his legs became, and this is from the coroner's report, "pulpified". Eew. But we don't get to know the soldiers that well, nor the Afghanis and Iraqis. So it's really the equivalent of a poster board presentation. Good information, boring, by the facts delivery.
See Standard Operating Procedures, Iraq in Fragments and My Country, My Country. You'll get the torture, the nation and the people much more than from "Taxi..." and if you want to understand the US government's role, watch Why We Fight and some of the numerous episodes of Frontline available for streaming on their website for free.
I can't believe this film won an Oscar. The best part of it was the title design. But Best Documentary doesn't have a sub-category for Best Graphic Design, so I guess the Academy had to roll-in all together.
