Taxi to the Dark Side (2007) User Reviews (63)

A point of view well substantiated with facts.

[Michael Fargo · 8/10 · 8 February 2008]

This film is a worthy attempt to bring what has become a familiar subject throughout the Bush years without necessarily giving the other side an opportunity to state their case. While I personally support what the film is saying about questionable, even criminal policies of the Bush Administration's view on "interrogation" as a betrayal of all this country holds dear, the film leaves itself open to attack which is unfortunate. Tidbits are cherry picked from interviews and Congressional testimony, and while it's understandable that major players didn't want to sit down and give an interview, it's glaring that they aren't given an chance to explain why they've said what they said. I'll acknowledge the filmmaker probably has it right, but nevertheless, it's an unfair tactic.

The chief first hand accounts of information are from U.S. Military personnel who have been convicted of crimes (with the exception of one British national who has a harrowing, convincing story to tell). While what they have to say is compelling, the absence of any testimony of those who gave them those orders is absent. We have their attorneys or third parties removed to interpret what happened...or might have happened. While I couldn't be more sympathetic to the bind we've placed our young men and women in, the last thing I wanted to hear from an individual who's been convicted of torture and "wrongful death" (labeled a homicide by the coroner) is "I'm financially ruined." The moral quandary raised by the film isn't nearly answered until the final credits roll.

And where is Congress? Where is the oversight they are obligated to perform? Oh, they're holding hearings on steroid use in baseball.

We're never sure exactly what we're looking at. "Reenactments" are identified briefly, but clearly there is a lot that isn't documentary footage, and the famous photos of Abu Ghrabib reappear over and over frequently out of context.

This is a shameful chapter in American history, and it needs a less doctrinaire film to expose what are, as pointed out, crimes of war. One of the most effective moments is when the filmmaker's father appears over the closing credits. He is a former interrogator in WWII. His outrage rings true, and it should be every American's cry as well.

Familiar yet essential information about American policy post-9/11

[Chris Knipp · 8/10 · 21 February 2008]

Taxi to the Dark Side doesn't contain anything wholly new, just more complete detail and important clarifications, such as the fact that Guantanamo uses very much the same basic methods to Abu Ghraib, though the location is cleaner and of course was not formerly used by Saddam Hussein. Dilawar, the Afghan taxi driver, was essentially beaten to death by American soldiers in the Bagram prison. He did not live long once his ill-trained but plainly-directed captors got hold of him, but his final hours were terrifying and horrible. They kicked his legs till they turned to pulp and would have had to be amputated, had he lived. A heart condition caused an embolism that went to his brain and was the cause of death, which on the official US papers given to Dilawar's family, in English so they did not know what they meant, was "homicide," but the officer in charge of the prison denied this when queried. Gibney, who was responsible previously for the documentary Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, presents interviews with some of the American soldiers responsible for Dilawar's death. They were, of course, only following orders. Other talking heads clarify the fact that the "gloves are off" policy by US authorities following 9/11/01 goes back to Cheney, approved by Bush, carried out with gusto by Rumsfeld, and sent directly down the line to the low-ranking and inexperienced people whose behavior after the Abu Ghraib scandal emerged was claimed by authorities to be that of people on the "night shift" or "a few bad apples." This film thoroughly disproves that claim.

Gibney shows how the US administration has become willing to blatantly disregard the rule of law, domestic as well as international, to fight their "war on terror" in ways that involved extreme cruelty and murder. In doing this they had the assistance of various corrupt or immoral--or, if you prefer, simply very misguided--men of the law and the judiciary.

The practices have been illegal. They may also have been variously unwise. The photos of Americans mistreating Muslim prisoners at Abu Ghraib are good recruiting material for anti-US terrorists. But torture also simply doesn't work, accomplishes nothing useful. Much time is given to Alfred McCoy, author of a book called 'The Question of Torture' and a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin. McCoy recounts that the CIA has been working on methods of coercion for all the decades of its existence, but their experiments have yielded little except lawsuits from victimized guinea pigs. Another authority, a former CIA operative, asserts that the best method to obtain information is to gain the confidence of the prisoner and convince him you can help him.

But post 9/11 "high value" prisoners were clearly tortured with anything their captors could think of--and then confessed to anything they could think of. The film clarifies that psychological experiments by Donald Hobb at McGill University in the Seventies proved sensory deprivation is the most effective means of torture; at least according to Hobb it can induce psychosis within 48 hours. The film shows that basically all "terrorism" suspects here and abroad have been subjected to sensory deprivation. That is what covering the ears, head, and hands does; and it was and is standard treatment to continue this for hours and days. This is more effective than pain. But effective at doing what? Breaking down the prisoner, not obtaining reliable information, or any information, for that matter.

Hence the widely spread US policies are not only harmful, dangerous, immoral, and illegal, but stupid and, in intelligence-gathering terms, worthless.

The "extraordinary rendition," waterboarding, sensory deprivation, etc. don't work in practical terms, but they have a political purpose. They convince people that the US is "getting tough" on its enemies. But the US has not been holding real enemies. If it were, the useless prisoners or wrongly captured would be filtered out, as Dilawar ought to have been. He was innocent. And now the US authorities are in a bad position. They cannot acquit even those few Guantanamo prisoners they are putting up for show trials, because to do so would reveal that they had been held for six years for no reason. That would look bad. Varieties of Orwellian terminology have been devised to describe these prisoners. The film also shows "tours" of Guantanamo and deflates the claims of the tour guides.

One reason for all this is who's been in charge: a group of draft dodgers who never served in a war. Senator McCain is shown in the film as a man who opposes torture for good reason: because he experienced it during his years in a North Vietnam prison.

Another issue: American has a developed a culture of guilty-as-charged, of hysterical attacks on imagined enemies. An example: the popular jingoistic TV program "24," starring Kiefer Sutherland as a CIA agent who "saves" millions by torturing mad terrorists with ticking bombs in Times Square. A Dark Side talking head says that there has never been such a person captured, and suggests that if there were, such a person would have the commitment to die rather than reveal information about his plot.

I do not know if torture never gets you information, though the assertion that insinuating oneself into the confidence of a prisoner is more effective makes sense. What is clear enough from Gibney's powerful and disturbing film (which contains many images not for the squeamish) is that the torture and wrongful imprisonment and lawlessness of the US as a nation post-9/11 indicate a country that has become very cruel and very stupid.

Andrew O'Hehir of Salon.com recounts that at a post-screening Q&A when Gibney was asked what he would like his film to accomplish, he said "I hope it provokes some rage." "Well," says O'Hehir, "it worked on me." May it work on everyone who sees it.

Sickening, but not shocking

[Getafilm · 8/10 · 9 February 2008]

In addition to objectively painting a portrait of a given subject matter, a documentary is usually expected to be an exposé of said subject matter; a story you've never heard, or a story you've heard before, but not in "this way." Though engrossing and often gross, the real weakness of Taxi to the Dark Side is the fact that it's the same story told in pretty much the same way we've always heard: poor leadership within the U.S. administration led to poor decision-making on the ground, which led to poor detainees being treated poorly. Everyone's guilty but no one is to blame. This circuitous chaos is the subject matter and not the fault of Alex Gibney, but I hold him accountable for not telling me anything I didn't already know about it (and for thoroughly confusing me with years and locations). If there was ever an instance of preaching to the choir, this was it. Why did I expect more? Because Gibney's Enron was a triumph - as much as you knew about that scandal (which was probably not much), he laid out a linear, exacting argument that left no room for debate. As ironic as it seems to say so, Taxi to the Dark Side is not going to convince anyone of anything. You either think torture is bad, or you think torture is good. I really don't see a middle ground, and if you're in the second group you won't change your mind from what Gibney presents, you'll just shrug your shoulders. For a brief moment he actually starts to get creative as we hear from a former FBI interrogator whose interrogation techniques were effective and peaceful (as much as he exaggerated). That started to be convincing, so why did it end? And what about the 30 second insight into how torture has been embraced by the American public thanks to the likes of 24? That's an interesting place to go, but we're left with more polarizing soundbites from Bush. How about the flash-quick glimpse into the future repercussions from torture survivors? Gibney even pushes his own personal connection to torture to the credits. Where was that the whole time? The short of it is, by focusing on the same old details and using some pretty tired arguments, Gibney prevents his merely good work from achieving real excellence. Though it's a good excuse to get angry for a few hours, Taxi to the Dark Side can really only be recommended for anyone who has had their head in the sand for the last five years.

How can anyone claim this film is biased?

[ruhi-yaman · 10/10 · 3 March 2008]

This horrifying documentary won the Oscar for 2007. Using the case of an innocent Afghan taxi driver who were tortured to death by American interrogators in Bagram prison as the starting point, the film chronicles the atrocities committed by the Bush administration in the name of American people and an ill-defined 'war on terror'.

The film is written, directed and narrated by Alex Gibney, son of a high-ranking naval officer who was an interrogator in World War II. A great American and a true patriot, Frank Gibney's final disappointment of what became of the great nation of the United States in the hands of a few liars is heart-wrenching.

There is not a single frame in the film that is not supported by hard evidence. All of the investigation was conducted by Americans whose credentials of decency and patriotism are above suspicion. The film is a chronicle of how paranoia, self-serving deceit and mere stupidity can threaten the very values a great nation was built on. It should be impossible for anyone who watches this meticulous document to ever criticize the veracity of claims put forward by the recent films, Rendition, In the Valley of Elah, or Redacted - flawed as films though that they were.

Every person in the world, especially every American, that cares about the true nature of freedom and the sanctity of the individual (the basic tenets on which America was built) should see this film. How could anyone claim that it would be loved only by the supporters of Taliban is beyond me.

Not an easy watch, but an important and excellent film

[blackburnj-1 · 9/10 · 9 January 2009]

Too few have heard of Dilawar. Those who have will probably never forget him. Alex Gibney certainly will not. His latest film starts and ends with this poor innocent taxi driver who, in 2002, was taken to the Bagram airbase in Afghanistan. Five days later, he was dead.

Dilawar's death was the spark which ultimately led to the international awareness of what the Bush administration was doing to its detainees in the war on terror. Gibney's film, however, decides to look up the tree, not down, to discover who was really responsible for these unpleasant developments.

Gibney's film is bolstered by frank and interesting interviews with some of the troops on the ground. Their remorse is clear, as is their disgust. And disgust is the right word. This is, by no means, an easy watch. The use of the appalling footage which has been generated by the recent conflicts is necessary because, if anyone is in any doubt about how morally reprehensible these tactics are, this film will make it abundantly clear.

However, this film's real strength is the structure of its attack on the tactics that are employed. Gibney demonstrates that the tactics used are hopelessly inadequate and never yield effective information. There is a cutting and brilliant comparison with the old techniques and the new where an interviewee, a former FBI interrogator, uses his old tools of interrogation – words – and you can feel yourself being persuaded.

This is not just a polemic. It is a human story and a powerful and well-constructed argument. It should be essential viewing as what has happened at Guantanamo, Bagram and Abu Ghraib should never be forgotten. This is excellent, important film-making.

4 Stars out of 5

Impacting film that stands as a good summary of the issue

[bob the moo · 11 December 2007]

In 2002 taxi driver Dilawar was picked up by US forces with his passengers in the desert and taken to Bagram prison in Afghanistan. Five days later he was dead. Injuries to his legs were compared with those he would have sustained if he had been run over by a truck – had he lived it was likely that his legs would have had to have been amputated due to the damage. With this as the starting point, this documentary tells the story of the role of "torture" in the war on terror, from Abu Ghraid to Guantanamo.

Having put Gibney's documentary on Enron as one of my ten favourite films of 2005, I eagerly took up the opportunity the UK (and much of Europe) had to catch this on television ahead of the full release in the US in 2008. Shown as part of the BBC's excellent "Why Democracy" series of films, this one opened with the caption question "can terrorism destroy democracy?". To the casual listener the question appears to be about the ability of terrorists to bring down what we see as Government (ie by crashing planes into it) but really the question in regards this film appears to be more about whether our idea of freedom and democracy can survive the way we fight terrorism. As a result this film is about the use of "torture" against terrorist suspects, specifically focusing on the United States.

The reader may be wondering why the focus (in the title) on Dilawar. Well I did too because he died in Bagram and his story sadly ends there, while the vast majority of the film focuses on the infamous examples of torture and inhumane treatment in the other places. Well it turns out that Dilawar is a device and one that the film uses very well. The morality of the use of torture is not black and white and of course the usual "ticking time bomb" scenario is thrown up; the film does counter this by suggesting that the weekly scenarios in Fox's 24 are not the norm (to say the least) but the best answer to most of the moral questions are simply to refer back to a taxi driver who died after five days in captivity with horrific injuries – the film doesn't say he was innocent but it doesn't need to – nobody suggests he was evil or a key player either, but yet he is dead. This hangs over the film even though he is not the focus after the first twenty minutes.

What the film does from then on in is paint a picture of lack of respect for humanity, lack of respect for international laws, lack of accountability and lack of transparency. The film plays a clip of Rumsfeld speaking on the (then) allegations of mistreatment and says that it will be looked into so that "the world will see how a free system, a democratic system, functions and operates"; well he was right – and it is not pretty viewing. As with Enron, Gibney does betray his politics and the film has very little in the way of even handedness about the debate. This is a little disappointing in regards the debate but the overwhelming nature of the presentation of arrogance and carelessness did make wonder how you would balance these issues – certainly the quotes I have heard down the years from politicians have not been able to convince. Certainly a clip of Bush talking about "suspected terrorists" who have died, or as he says "put it this way – they're no longer a problem to the United States"; the fact that he acknowledges they are "suspects" rather than convicts but yet sees their death as a good thing says it all.

Considering this issue is everywhere in the media, Gibney does very well to structure his film to build it from the ground up. Not only does he use the words of the Bush administration against them ("the only thing I know for certain is that these are bad people") but he also details the wider political picture beyond the blame that was dumped onto Lynndie England, Charles Graner and others. He does this very well, bringing in the input of John Yoo and the terribly smarmy Alberto Gonzales. Even after the photographs in the paper, seeing the unedited video and hearing firsthand accounts from both sides is shocking and disturbing affair – again, how would you set out to "balance" these? Beyond the issue of torture I found the lack of accountability and ownership to be just as shocking as privates are floated down the river while those in charge never face worse than early retirement. The biggest challenge with this material is to keep it as a valid piece of work even as the topic grows daily and that many will be tired of hearing about it – just this last week or so we have seen more debate and also the CIA deleting old tapes of interrogations (tapes that Bush has "no recollection" of existing); however Gibney brings the film to a close well, making it feel like something that can stand still and still work – the personal touch of his late father's comments at the end (himself a WWII Navy interrogator) talking about how "we" should be different than "them", making for a suitable summing up of why the film is important.

Another strong documentary from Gibney despite the lack of balance and the challenges with the topic. It deserves to be seen by a bigger audience than it has been, even if it won't make the difference it should do. Depressing to think that, decades from now people will look back on this and wonder how on earth we allowed our leaders to do this in our names and let them get away with it.

Taxi to the Dark Side

[jboothmillard · 6/10 · 9 May 2018]

I always make an effort to try and watch all films that win big during Awards Season in most years, when it comes to documentaries I am perhaps not as up to date, nevertheless, I am glad I took the time to watch this one. Basically in December 2002, an Afghan peanut farmer named Dilawar, who gave up farming to become a taxi driver, he and three passengers were arrested by US military officials, accused of organising an attack on Camp Salerno. Dilawar, an innocent man, was held in extrajudicial detention and interrogated at the Parwan Detention Facility at Bagram Air Base. He spent several days being tortured and beaten by US military prison guards, including multiple attacks on his thighs, a standard technique viewed as "permissible" and non-life-threatening. Following these severe attacks, Dilawar died in prison, most likely caused by a blood clot due to his injuries, his official death certificate passed, with his body, to his family was marked "homicide". The film explores the background of increasingly sanctioned "torture" since the 9/11 attacks, questioning and examining contemporary democracy, and the methods of the US military to interrogate suspect terrorists. It turns out that the guards, soldiers and other staff members of these prisons have disgusting motives, there have been reported and photographed incidents of prisoners being severely beaten and humiliated, stripped naked, forced to masturbate, deliberately scared, including with loud noises, such as vicious dogs barking, and much more unbelievable things. It is also shocking that when these incidents have been reported to the authorities, and go as far as reaching government officials, including the President of the United States (then George W. Bush), they are dismissed as procedures sanctioned by both the White House and the Pentagon, so no justice was done for a significant amount of time. The conclusion of this film is that the murder of Dilawar was exposed by the New York Times, those who murdered him were prosecuted, the body was taken back to Afghanistan, and more strict rules on interrogation are being employed. When you watch this film, you are absolutely appalled by the lack of decency shown by the prison staff, many even posing for photographs during their gross actions, it really does show the horrors of the "war on terror", with interviews from detainees, politicians and soldiers who have experienced these incidents for themselves, a powerful and provocative documentary. It won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature. Good!

Pointing out serious problems does not make this film Anti-American

[imxo · 9/10 · 30 March 2008]

There is something you need to know about this film: it is not about real insurgents or terrorists or about real soldiers, and it is certainly not an anti-American film.

It is about how senior military and civilian officials demand results from their subordinates, even if the results are to be obtained by unconscionable, immoral, and illegal means, up to, and including, torture and murder. The fact that many of these results - what the military like to call "the mission" - are faked or just wrong is of no particular concern to them. Naturally, you'll never find a document signed by any of those officials advocating torture and murder. The most you'll ever find is a reference to "enhanced interrogation techniques" (i.e., torture). And if a detainee dies, the senior officers and officials always benefit from "plausible deniability" and claim that it must be the fault of junior "bad apple" troops. If terrorists are murderers, some of our own troops have certainly engaged in murder, too. To reveal this is not anti-American; it's just a simple fact. Because the troops often do it in a group they think they're not murderers. Just as, I imagine, someone who participates in gang rape does not consider himself, individually, to be a rapist.

While most Military Police (MP) troops are fighting hard on the ground every day in Iraq and Afghanistan, one group of troops which this film examines are those Military Police who are used as prison guards. The other troops examined in the film are some military intelligence ("MI") troops employed as interrogators in prison camps.

If you don't know already, Military Police are usually despised by their own troops. If you give a soldier special power over his fellow soldiers he will often abuse it. I still recall an Australian friend of mine mentioning that many of the Aussie "Red Hats" (MPs) who sailed for home after WWII never made it back; their fellow troops threw them overboard.

The old saw about military intelligence being a contradiction in terms is never more apparent than in the case of interrogators. When you hear the word intelligence here you must forget all about spies, codes, and the stuff of James Bond novels. The interrogators of MI are an example of soldiers who are ill prepared, in general, to carry out work that would normally take years to master. They are mostly low-ranking enlisted men and women, privates and sergeants, almost none of whom speak with any proficiency the language of the detainees they're interrogating.

So, imagine the scenario: senior officials demanding intelligence, no matter how it's obtained; unqualified interrogators using whatever means they can think of to satisfy their superiors' demands; and MP prison guards who have the power of life and death over their detainees, with almost no restrictions on what they can do to them. Behind all this is the unwritten understanding that if something goes wrong, the troops will probably not be prosecuted. God help the innocent person swept up into this sadistic, bureaucratic system. But as we all know, if you've been arrested, you must be guilty. Right?

The elephant in the closet in all this is the Central Intelligence Agency, an organization that regards itself as above law, morality, and civilized behavior. It gets away with much of what it does by having the military, foreigners, and contractors to do its dirty work for it. And when somebody has to take a fall, well, that's what privates and sergeants are for. If your kids are MPs, interrogators, or just in the military, advise them always to watch their backs around those people.

This may be a disturbing film for civilians, but it won't include many surprises if you've served in the armed forces, or on a police force, or in a prison. Those are the people who know about this, but they're not about to tell you. No wander the USA has pulled out of the War Crimes Treaty. But what officials do not want to admit, even to themselves, is that war crimes are war crimes, no matter if you're a treaty signatory or not.

Technically good, but not the big picture

[melwyn · 6/10 · 19 March 2011]

The Nuremburg trials left us two legacies. First, no matter what your rank, you are responsible for your actions. As one Nazi after another said, "I was just following orders", we made it clear this was no excuse for war crimes. Second, given the winners get to write history, we have a deluded mindset that war crimes are things other people commit, not us.

Alex Gibney has tried to send a message about America's hypocritical sacrifice of longstanding principles by focusing on a single man, a taxi driver tortured to death by American forces in Afghanistan. This focus never allows us to forget that these victims are people just like us, and they are the victims of terrible crimes for which no one has been held accountable.

Gibney reveals how high up knowledge and sanction of these crimes goes. Bush, Cheney and Rumsfield are directly responsible for the official policy allowing torture, increasing the number of people who have never faced war crimes charges but should do so.

It is confronting, saddening and maddening to watch. But what undermines Gibney's effort is that he doesn't give us the full context. Instead he allows the soldiers' own words to absolve them of responsibility by allowing claims of "just following orders" to go unchallenged. Worse, he allows the miserable excuse of being "poorly trained", as if an adult needs to be told that torturing people, especially people they know are innocent, is wrong.

This is a cop-out. Our failed humanitarian intervention in Somalia revealed that torturing civilians (often to death) for sport and photographing it is a popular hobby among many military forces, and those of many Western democracies including the US are no exception. Yet we insist on seeing them as one-off instances of "a few bad apples" out of control, rather than an indication of a systemic, ingrained culture that urgently needs to be dealt with. All Bush and Co did was sanction activities many soldiers were already engaging in, but Gibney cannot or will not acknowledge this.

I can't fault his technical skills, it's methodical and well-edited. But I cannot add "well researched" or "thorough". By not giving us the broader context and by not looking at the culture that encourages war crimes among US soldiers, he let these guys off lightly.

Must-see documentary is very nearly unwatchable at times.

[gregv2k · 10/10 · 10 October 2007]

Much like the director's Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, the subject of Taxi to the Dark Side carries the dual burdens of public burnout and simultaneous public smugness. We're tired of hearing of prisoner abuse, and moreover, we think we know all there is to know about it anyway.

I wouldn't have guessed that I could be affected by unedited imagery from Abu Gahrib but as it turns out, it's 24 hours since I saw TTTDS and I can't shake the images from my head. Many will want to hide their eyes from what our own tax dollars hath wrought, and perhaps some will be right to do so. This is a brutal, agonizing, blistering and exhausting journey that doesn't pull any punches. No digital scrambling or government double-speak to hide the unpleasant parts - just pure evil.

The screening audience was active with conversation when the lights came up and one was heard to say that this was a truer documentary than any created by Michael Moore. I don't know what that means, but without a doubt no documentary I have ever seen has gotten under my skin to such a degree. What makes it brilliant is that it captures, simultaneously, the evil that men (and women) do AND the faith that we all carry for greater human achievement.

A college professor once described "Schindler's List" as the story of God's grace in a godless place. What's agonizing about TTTDS is that for much of the film God is nowhere to be found, beyond the desperate screams of "Allah" as extricated from captives by US Soldiers given no direction and without a magnetic north in their moral compass.

Those who not only condone but advocate the horrors on display in this film are all here, in their own words, to justify their leadership with the talking points we've heard again and again over the past 5 years. In the context of Bagram and Guantanamo Bay their words take on a sinister edge I'd not heard before. I can't recommend this film highly enough, nor can I suggest more strongly that you do not know what you're in for.

Cool Hand Dilawar.

[rmax304823 · 7/10 · 27 April 2009]

Anybody see "Cool Hand Luke" (1967) with Paul Newman as an inmate at a small southern prison camp? That's the one in which a guard tells Luke, "You got to get your mind right." A gripping movie, comic and then tragic. The guards, led by the pock-faced "man with no eyes", are real mean mothers. For infractions of the rules or any sassy backtalk, they lock Luke up in "the box", an upright wooden shelter the size of a one-hole outhouse, with only a pail for company. He's held there in the blistering heat for 24 hours. When Luke gets more uppity they simply beat hell out of him.

Well, all of that is peanuts compared to what went on in our detainee camps at Bagram, Abu Ghraib, and Gitmo -- not to mention the CIA-maintained black holes in countries known around the world for their humane treatment of prisoners, such as Egypt and Bulgaria.

The detainees at Bagram and Abu Ghraib -- only 10 percent of whom were picked up by coalition forces, the rest being turned over to us by Afghanis or Pakinstanis, sometimes for bounty -- were not subject to any questioning before being thrown into solitary confinement and held there not for 24 hours, like Luke, but for weeks. They were shackled to the ceiling, forced to assume stress positions, beaten on the legs, waterboarded and forced to undergo many of the other horrors we associate with the Inquisition.

But that's an old story by now. This film doesn't really tell us much that we hadn't known or guessed, except that it was worse than we imagined. It begins and ends with the case of Dilawar, a taxi driver who left his family to drive to the provincial capitol and show off his new car and wound up in Bagram where he was killed -- one of 37 homicides so far acknowledged by the US Army. His legs were "pulpified" according to the Army's medical examiner.

There are three fundamental issues involved in the application of enhanced interrogation techniques. (1) Do they work? (2) Are they moral? (3) Are they legal? "Taxi to the Dark Side", for most of its length, seems to focus on the first question. Does torture work? Well, no it doesn't.

That is to say, it's worthless if your goal is to get accurate information out of your subjects. But it may be well worthwhile if your aim to exact revenge upon people who look like the lunatics who flew airplanes into the WTC in 2001, people who speak the same language and come from the same area, the Middle East. Boy, are those Middle East folks alien to us. The language sounds like they're clearing their throats. They wear tablecloths on their heads. They dream of 72 virgins in Paradise. If you want revenge, these are your targets alright. I doubt that one out of a hundred Americans could walk up to a blank map on the wall and put his finger on Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, and Syria. We don't know anything about geography but we know what we don't like.

The enlisted men who were tried for some of the crimes and interviewed for this film wouldn't say exactly that. For those who were willing to talk about it, they claim that their orders were vague. No officer was ever charged, while the enlisted men wound up with prison terms and BCDs.

Also not spoken about -- probably because nobody knows about it -- are the taken-for-granted assumptions about relationships between guards and prisoners. It's all very well for us, sitting at home in our Naugahide recliners, to feel angry at the way the untrained and ill-led MPs performed but, as one of them says, "Try going over there and saying that." He's right. It has to do with role playing. It's not my opinion. It's established experimental fact. I refer anyone interested to Philip Zimbardo's famous "prison experiment" in the 1950s. It's probably available on Google.

Well, you might ask, does anyone come out of this perfectly serious description of perfectly despicable acts looking good? Yes, in fact. The representative of the FBI argues persuasively that his agency was able to step out of the box and recognize what was happening. And a couple of politicians, like John McCain, coming late to the game expressed their disapproval in public.

One is tempted to compare it to Errol Morris's "Standard Operating Procedure" but they're different movies with different ends in mind. Morris avoids easy judgments and asks in his usual philosophical way what the photos from Abu Ghraib "mean". This film is more interested in demonstrating what went on in the prison. I expected it to be an abusive moral diatribe but it turned out to be pretty instructive. We all know about the mistreatment, but I, at least, had never understood how endemic and intense it was. I give Gibney credit for not taking the easy route of bashing the suits in Washington more than they deserve, for not making fools of them more than they've done themselves. Only once, during a guided tour of Guantanamo Bay, does he turn sarcastic. As the cheerful guide (it's like a tour of Universal Studios) shows us the neat little cells with the neatly made bed and the comfortable slippers and the box of checkers on the night table, the pop tune "My Little Corner of the World" plays in the background -- ancient and mindless, kind of like torture.

A depressing movie underneath it all.

The award-winning documentary you're not going to see

[blubb06 · 10/10 · 3 March 2008]

... at least not on Discovery Channel.

Said director Alex Gibney recently (on DemocracyNow): "Well, it turns out that the Discovery Channel isn't so interested in discovery. I mean, I heard that — I was told a little bit before my Academy Award nomination that they had no intention of airing the film..."

Discovery Channel has bought the exclusive TV rights for the next 3 years, but Gibney hopes they can be persuaded to sell them "for a profit".

And it is a powerful film. Although it reveals nothing new about the torture and degrading techniques we've become accustomed to over the last three years, it puts politician's faces and statements in context with a "real" victim and a name: young Afghan Taxi driver Dilawar, who was arrested at a checkpoint for alleged involvement in a rocket attack. Five days later he died at Bagram, after two days of continuous beatings, standing up in chains inside his solitary confinement cell. The American coroner checked "homicide" on his death certificate and handed it with the body to his family, who couldn't read English.

The film then takes us along the ride from Afghanistan to the present day. Dilawar was only the beginning, and one of two detainees who died from torture roughly at the same time. Today, about 180 people have died in custody, 38 with "homicide" on their death certificates. Dilawar's torturers tell their story. They took the rap, they repent, but is this justice? What's the bigger picture, the one that's usually glossed over, and the reason Discovery deems this documentary "controversial"?

Alex Gibney dismantles "Torture the American way" just like he did the Enron scandal in "Enron: The smartest guys in the room", from the inside to the bigger inside, like a Russian doll. You will hear the words "war crimes", see the infamous torture memo, Abu Ghraib photos and film, Kiefer Sutherland torturing with electric wires, Guantanamo, Cheney, Rumsfield, Bush and their lawyers wriggling around the t-word and egging on that "we must take our gloves off". "We have to work the dark side, if you will. We're going to spend time in the shadows", says Cheney.

"But... is the dark side stronger?"

"No. Quicker, easier, more seductive. Anger, fear, aggression, the dark side are they.

"Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny."

Very well-researched and very well documented

[osj2507 · 7/10 · 5 January 2016]

A very persuasive film, it seems to be very well-researched and very well documented, but in the same way someone is still hiding their true colors or hiding the fact that they are very ashamed of their actions.

Where to put the blame is hard to say, we can all agree that the actions portrayed are wrong and letting them happen without doing anything is also wrong. But I guess when you are in the situation, who are you to step up to your fellow soldier or your superior, and be the one stepping out and following your gut or your head instead of orders.

It's an eye opener, and gives great insight about the actions and decisions behind all the pictures and the acts that we have all seen in the media.

It's War

[jsamp74 · 1/10 · 30 September 2008]

I served as an infantry squad leader in Iraq for 12 months. War is a terrible, awful endeavor. Americans, most of whom have had nothing to do with the military since the draft ended, have this idea that modern combat is a sanitized, scientific exercise. The media exacerbates this notion the more it shows real time footage of high tech weapons in action and the more it uses terms such as "smart bomb", "rules of engagement", and "collateral damage", which have long since entered our vocabulary.

The world isn't becoming more peaceful, either. War will be with us for a long time. It was brutal during the time of Ancient Rome, it was brutal during Napoleon's rule, and it continues to be today. We are simply more efficient at killing one another, but there will always be casualties in conflict. Torture, maiming, and killing are the unpleasant truths that most people don't want to hear about. And when they do, in this country, they assign blame and try to ease the blow with investigations, policies, and other political nonsense. It's war. It can't be cleaned or sanitized by anything. Get over it.

The liberals will have you believe that America is and always will be the cause of so much unrest in the world today. We aren't. Rogue nuclear nations and terrorists without borders are as much to blame. They expect perfection in a world that will never be perfect and that is the problem of the left. This documentary magnified this. Once again, the wrongdoings of a few bad apples in the US military was highlighted for the Monday morning quarterbacks to scrutinize, while the noble deeds of American soldiers was completely ignored.

If you have never served in the military, or in a forward area, or have never worked in a law enforcement or security capacity, you aren't qualified to judge. The public expects perfection in a world that isn't perfect and expects military and police to detain the bad guys as if the bad guys have neon signs on their backs saying "Arrest me!" If this documentary disturbed you, then try walking a beat, a patrol, or guarding a prisoner for a day or two. You have your policies and you have your human side---which can potentially become more humane or more callous. If you can't relate, then you aren't qualified to judge. There is a ton of gray area that most people don't want to hear about because they are convinced that everything is black and white.

If you meet a terrorist or a criminal, then be prepared to fight and fight hard! The documentary better defined the reasons, decisions, and policies behind Abu Ghirab and other events and explained why the MPs acted as they did. I am sure that some detainees at Guantanamo were in the "wrong place at the wrong time" and I am sure that some were members of Al Queda. Again, consider the events of 9/11 and consider how difficult it is for the foot soldier to identify friends and foes in the "fog of war." Let them do their jobs as best as they can, or else there may be another 9/11.

The documentary ignored the yield of interrogations. Did they save American lives on the battlefield or at home? Did they make a difference? I personally served in Iraq and I consider myself well-versed in modern media trickery. Had the documentary given any attention to what resulted on the battlefield from any intelligence obtained, then HBO's anti-war meaning would have been lost.

Military and police work is a dirty job---but like trash collection, someone's got to do it. Pick up a rifle and stand a post and you'll better understand. Until you do, you aren't qualified to judge.

Blood from a Turnip

[Tecun_Uman · 10/10 · 18 February 2008]

Yep, it is another one of those Iraq and Afghanistan documentaries. I know the burnout rate is high on these, which is probably why I almost did not bother, but nothing else was showing. Man, was I happy I saw this! It has rekindled my hate for the Bush administration, which had turned to apathy over the last year. This tells the story of an Afghani taxi driver that is mistakenly picked up as a Taliban supporter, but before they find out he was innocent, he has been beaten to death by his American torturers.

This film has interviews from all of the guards that were responsible, JAG officers, FBI people, CIA agents on the ground etc. And you see that all of the blame lies with Ashcroft and the Bushies, who gave one vague order after another that they wanted confessions and they wanted them quickly, with a wink and a nod about what kind of methods to use. So you have these frustrated high school drop-outs presiding over these people thousands of miles from anywhere, and they won't confess. So, beatings and humiliations follow. And when the crap comes out, the Bush administration passes a bill that absolves all higher-ups from any responsibility and they start to bust the enlisted men and women, who were following orders. Pathetic. Of course, we also find out that over 95% of the prisoners being held, were captured by Pakistanis and Northern Alliance people, WHO were paid by the US government for each person they turned over, guilty or not guilty. And you wonder why meaningful confessions were so hard to come by. It reminds me of the scene from Full Metal Jacket, where the psycho army guy shoots the Vietnamese farmers from his helicopter. He says the ones that run are VC, the ones that don't run are well trained VC. Very tragic.

inspires the righteous outrage every American (or just anyone period) should have about torture "policies"

[Quinoa1984 · 10/10 · 23 February 2008]

Taxi to the Dark Side accomplishes what a documentary, or just a concise analysis, regarding all of the facts in one of the many nightmares the United States' involvement in the middle east should: to inspire the utmost disgust and condemnation of a system that has become as corrupt as it has (or rather always has been with this bunch). It's uncontainable to think how all of this started, grew exponentially, and resulted ultimately in the horrors at Abu Gharyb and Guantanamo Bay, in that it is nestled in the twisted, criminal (yes folks, criminal) 'policies' of the Bush administration. But Alex Gibney's approach isn't narrow-minded but multi-faceted: he's interested in what a complex, ugly organism torture has become, the psychological just as much as the physical, and he has a man at the center of it. Dilawar, an innocent taxi driver from a poor farm in Afghanistan, was swept up by three other Afghan soldiers and sent to Bagram prison, where along with other supposed terrorists or terrorist collaborators was tortured (in his case especially in brutal fashion, as we learn in graphic description from those who participated first-hand), and died from the trauma.

His death was a controversy, but not one that ever got the kind of attention it deserved; until this documentary I never even heard of Dilawar or even much about Bagram prison. Yet it was at this prison, as well as the first biggie interrogation of the would-be 20th hijacker of the plane on 9/11 to crash in Pennsylvania (which, by false confession, led to an over-excited but false-rooted assumption that Al Quaeda had links to Baghdad), that led to Abu Gharyb, which revealed the horrors of soldiers in unyielding terror over their subjects but, more importantly, the virus that spread through the chain of command. Gibney's approach is approximate and expertly probing: it's not enough to just focus of Dilawar (even as his story could make up a whole legitimate documentary alone), or on Abu Gharyb. As in his previous film, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, it's essential to dissect this wretched beast from top to bottom, to see not simply the soldiers first-hand accounts, but straight from the horse's mouth the words from Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, and Bush himself.

Because, in reality, there is something to feel sorry for with these soldiers. It can be argued, and not without just cause, that what the soldiers did at Bagram, Abu Gharyb, and to an extent even at GITMO, was wrong and rotten and they could have said no and so on and so forth. However, as with the ground war situation in Iraq, it's all about the chain of command, and the fact that no matter what the parties initially responsible are not held accountable for any of their actions. It's almost frightening to forget the amount of footage available with these men like Rumsfeld and Gonzalez and Cheney where they not only admit to being fine with torture tactics - and whether or not it's psychological torture or not is besides the point as ALL torture IS torture, albeit a facet that Gibney brilliantly chronicles in the history of the CIA to its 'logical' extension in recent years - but set it up in legal wrangling so as to not get it any trouble for what they've done which is, of course, breaking Geneva conventions and whatnot.

If I sound like I'm sounding bias with this, then you should leave this review right now. There is no bias when it comes to this issue (or rather there SHOULD be no bias, as for a split second McCain showed until he relented recently that torture isn't as bad as he used to think). What one sees as the line between what is proper interrogation of a subject and outright abuse to get that "ticking time-bomb" is revealed by Kloogman from the FBI, who paraphrases how an interrogation would usually be done and lays it on the line that this form has actually had results - not pain and death or, at best, a bull**** court at GITMO where it's like a joke Kafka wouldn't write. Gibney presents all the information with the bluntness that's required, with testimony, footage from press conferences and commissions (i.e. that cringe-inducing bit with Gonzalez where he has a horrible pause when trying to answer a simple question about whether or not to condone torture), and it's presented lucidly, edited for a cumulative effect and with the skill of a filmmaker in total trust with his subject(s) to take all of the pieces into a whole that shakes one to the core.

And all of this would be powerful enough to make an impact, but with the recent explosion of news coverage on water-boarding - and that the CIA has admitted to torturing three subjects - Taxi to the Dark Side remains startlingly relevant. In fact, it's even more tragically relevant than last year's Sicko or even No End in Sight. From the tragedy of Dilawar to the tragedy of Abu Gharyb, which was like Salo turned into as shockingly real as could never be imaginable, the Bush administration has put the US into even more danger than ever before by resorting to the lowest form of humanity, condoning acts to the soldiers that sixty years ago would never be committed in the harshest of circumstances on our side. This, again, isn't some silly bias, this is just fact. It's enough to make one sick to one's stomach, and as long as a film such as this exists, the pain can't be brushed aside or dulled by diverting network news.

Strong Documentary on Torture

[Michael_Elliott · 1 May 2012]

Taxi to the Dark Side (2007)

**** (out of 4)

Excellent, Oscar-winning documentary taking a look at the use of torture during the Bush administration. The documentary takes a look at a couple men who were beaten to death at the Bagram Prison including an Afghan taxi driver who picked up three passengers and was never heard of again until he was murdered inside the prison. Throughout the documentary we get interviews with experts on torture, journalists who broke the story and also with actual soldiers who were involved with the torture. Director Alex Gibney does a terrific job at looking at everything involved in this including the political and moral sides of it. The torture aspect is something that there are so many rules around that it would seem like an obvious thing not to do but we then learn about various loopholes that were used so that terrorists could be abused in order to get more information about terror plots. We also get to know how many of the soldiers who were arrested were made to look like bad apples yet they said they were just following orders. The documentary takes a look at all the torture acts ranging from water boarding, sexual humiliations and of course the actual physical abuse. The film shows some pretty graphic photos and videos so those squeamish will certainly want to be prepared to look away from the screen. The documentary is broken into several different segments with each looking at a different aspect of the story. One of the most interesting pieces involves the taxi driver because it turned out he was an innocent man who had no connection to terrorism. The documentary is one that really makes you think because if you go into it feeling that terrorists do deserve to be tortured, you're quickly reminded that several innocent people were being tortured and killed. The film even admits that many people believe that torture should be allowed under certain circumstances. TAXI TO THE DARK SIDE is a very disturbing documentary that shows some ugly images and makes you wonder who was in charge of all of this stuff. It's not an easy film to sit through but it's worth watching and discussing.

Take a smaller case and expand to the bigger picture

[Seraphion · 7/10 · 21 October 2015]

The movie begins relatively light by only focusing on mysteriously introducing about the focus victim's person, and then the ordeal he's been through. But then the movie expand and stretch the case to the bigger and relatively more grave matter of the subject. The movie takes the audience to the long detour in exchange of the enlightenment about the torture maltreatment and raising concerns about it. One thing great about this movie is that it didn't bother to shoot any actual reenactment since it already has strong materials in the archival photos, audio recordings and documents. Particularly the photos are indeed strongly harsh. Although they don't portray immediate violence, but they depict immediate stress and humiliation. The ending goes back very nicely to the smaller case just to show that it was such a wicked manipulation after all, all to uncover the serious mistake done by the government.

It's a Bitter Pill - Now Take Your Medicine

[revere-7 · 9/10 · 15 January 2011]

With a title like Taxi to the Dark Side, you know it's not going to be a light-and-fluffy film, but it's a film that needed to be made, and should be seen by everyone.

The measure of a nation is how well it lives up to its ideals in the worst of times. 9/11 was that trial for America, and America failed. If you do not believe that former U.S. president George W. Bush, former vice president Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, White House Council John Yoo, and at least a half dozen other members of the Bush Administration are guilty of war crimes, you must see this documentary.

Even if you suspect they do, but have lingering doubts – you must see this documentary.

And especially if you don't know either way, and know nothing about this issue – you must see this documentary.

This is not some sort of Michael Moore propaganda piece. This transcends partisan politics. It deals with a broader issue. It focuses on the treatment of just one detainee and will probably make you sick to your stomach – if you can stomach it at all. And then reminds you that this happened not to just one guy, but to 83,000 others too.

Hell yes, its difficult to watch - there is graphic photos of torture – but is that an excuse not to watch it? The fact is they are presented because showing them is necessary to fully understand the extent of what went on. And guess what? If you are an American, you damn well should sit through this, because you are guilty too – this is what your elected officials did.

Of course when word finally got out, and they got blowback for it, in an outrageous act of cowardice, they left their own subordinates out to dry.

The film makes the case, clearly, efficiently and thoroughly. Which makes it not only an excellent documentary, but an important one too.

"You put people in crazy situations, and people do crazy things."

[classicsoncall · 7/10 · 21 October 2017]

Combine the above sentiment voiced by one of the military men positioned as a prison guard in Iraq with the 'pressure to produce intelligence', and you wind up with the kind of conditions that existed at Abu Ghraib. Was it right? Of course not, and when all human dignity is taken away from a person with the brutal tactics shown in the documentary, it's difficult to understand that there may have been another side to the equation. I'm not condoning the actions of the personnel shown beating and humiliating their captives, but a film like this is never intended to show the flip side of the coin, that is, the atrocities committed by the other side. With entities like the Taliban or present day ISIS, there is no ambiguity in the way they treat their victims. Headless corpses don't get a chance to tell their side of things.

Taxi to Dark Side/Torture "chain of command"

[fieldb · 10/10 · 6 May 2008]

I just saw this program in Australia and am writing to say thankyou a million times. I can't congratulate ALL involved in this enough and it offers us the opportunity to remedy an horrendous universally dangerous & immoral evil.... and I suspect immoral behaviour/torture is not only a major cause of "terrorism" but also a danger to out troops and "a totalitarian noose around our own necks" in future? If they can do this stuff to poor peasants & Innocent farmers etc in the third world why could they not do it to ANYONE? I doubt the Nazis were this inhumane? Has there been a "scheme" to circumvent "law" by Bush, Cheney, Addington, Libby, Rumsfeld, Wolforwitz, Pearle et al (or perhaps those who have bought them??) & "Media lies"?? .... Investigate & prosecute ALL war criminals I think....or say hello to a police state at home very soon perhaps?

Taxi to the Dark Side

[taxicc · 7/10 · 2 May 2020]

Most tragically, in the end, it is always these poorest people who fall victim to politics. "Terrorists" or soldiers are just a piece of dust on the chessboard of interest groups.

Heart of Darkness

[proterozoic · 10/10 · 2 February 2011]

A bomb went off, and we looked away. The medieval tableaux of Abu Ghraib did manage to shock us for a while. Then, some people were punished, and we convinced ourselves that was all of them.

According to the Global Views survey, in 2010, 42 percent of Americans were in favor of "using torture to extract information from suspected terrorists." This is 6 points higher than in 2008; 12 points higher than in 2004. Could this become a majority soon? Are these people who have seen and remember those photographs? Have they reconciled themselves to such scenes? Could I? "Taxi to the Dark Side" is an exceptionally meticulous documentary that takes the case of an Afghan taxi driver who was beaten to death by interrogators at Bagram base in 2006, and puts it in the context of American anti-terror policy. It shows young soldiers with no training in interrogation, given vague instructions and strong expectations of results - and when the story goes public, they are hung out to dry. One interview, one document at a time, the fog of legal and moral ambiguity is dispelled, until televised denials by administration officials shrink to nothing next to a stark red pillar of human suffering.

Maybe our culture won't let us believe that the good guys can do such things to innocent people. The detective throws down his badge and solves the case outside the system. He hits a man in the face; he gets a name. He pistol-whips another man; the man is reluctant, and he gets shot in the leg. A bartender gets dunked into dishwater. He almost dies, but gives up his contact.

There was ambiguity in movies like The French Connection, but at some point, the detective stopped ever being wrong. This documentary makes a compelling suggestion that popular entertainment has helped spread the idea of justified and reliable torture.

Taxi to the Dark Side won the Oscar for best documentary, and nobody saw it. It barely made a quarter of its budget. That's really too bad. It's a good idea for citizens to see it, then think about whether they believe that everything's OK.

Nothing shocking really but decent

[saraccan · 7/10 · 20 June 2018]

This is a documentary about how torture was normalized by Americans post-9/11. We see interviews with "interrogators", victims and other people who were involved with these actions and decisions. We learn about the "interrogation techniques" they used to get the necesarry information they need and/or they want.

Its helpful if you were completely oblivious to what happened during those years, if not its still good.

Where were the American suicide bombers - did I miss them?

[glenneboy · 1/10 · 14 November 2008]

Watching the DVD of this movie I kept thinking maybe it would redeem itself and show "the other side: How do the Islamitic fascists treat their prisoners? Then it dawned on me. There is no "other side". The Islamitic fascists behead those they capture. They don't have prisoners. They don't get the chance to "torture" anyone because it's pretty much impossible to torture someone who has no head.

I was also waiting to see how the evil Americans use suicide bombers to kill innocent men, women and children in markets, on buses, in schools, and any and every other public place. Oh wait, silly me. Americans don't use suicide bombers. Or maybe Gibney has plans for a sequel which will document this hitherto unknown evil side of America.

I must have fallen asleep at some point because I missed the part where good 'ol Alex showed American pilots flying into the skyscrapers of Kabul and Baghdad killing thousands of innocent Afghans and Iraqis. The fact there are no skyscrapers in these peaceful, ancient cities is beside the point. He could have shown Americans flying into ANY building and slaying innocents, after all isn't that what American pilots would do if they had half a chance?

The poor taxi driver, Dingle-Berry, or Dilawar (to use his Afghan name), the star of the show, reminded me a lot of Burt Lancaster in "The Birdman of Alcatraz".

You just know Dingle and Burt were innocents; there is no way these souls could be guilty of, well, anything. What I'd like to know, and Mr. Gibney did not resolve this for me, is just how does he know that Dilawar NEVER, ever, ever, ever transported enemy combatants in his little taxi? I find it hard, dare I say impossible, to believe that Dilawar questioned every passenger he ever picked up to make sure they were not combatants. If he really was the saint and martyr Alex made him out to be why is it we were never told, point blank, that Dilawar refused and truly did NOT transport combatants?

I was going to start out my comments saying this film borders on treason, but after writing the above I guess that would have been wrong to say. This film does not, I repeat, does not border on treason. It is treasonous through and through. Anyone who watches this film and says "Right On Comrade Gibney" is as guilty as Alex of treason.