This was an interesting story to watch and as an autobiographical piece on the man who was the subject I will say interesting, but it fails as a documentary on the subject of Jihad and comes off a bit superficial.
I won't get into the story. It was definitely interesting but there were too many questions, for a 2010 documentary, that were ignored and completely unanswered.
First and foremost the battles and wars this man participated in were all pre 9/11, but it seems to me the proper question to be asked of this man would have been his feelings on suicide bombers, attacks on the U.S. and the west, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. None of that was even brought up. The only part they even touched was that he was supposedly fighting for a faction in Lebanon that opposed kidnappings and may have been part of rescuing an American journalist. It is no secret in the story that he has a clear disdain for the U.S. but maybe the filmmakers were too afraid to ask the above questions.
There were other odd things as well. They mentioned that he showed up in both Lebanon and Bosnia with his own weapons...? They didn't even ask at all how he was able to smuggle both hand guns and automatic weapons through international security.
So if I were forced to give this film a school type grade I would say "I" for incomplete. Some of the facts seemed to be checked. Others seemed to be taken on faith. Overall it lacked the critical questioning that a good fact based interview should. There seemed to be an overall lack of questioning a man who by all accounts led an interesting life but also deserved to be probed a bit.
