Taxi to the Dark Side (2007)

 

USA, 106 minutes, documentary 

Director/writer/narrator: Alex Gibney 

Photography: Maryse Alberti, Greg Andracke 

Another decent documentary looking at the excesses of the Bush years in terms of its foreign policy, and another one already dated by developments that keep emerging (or that don't, but in which the stalling has advanced the story, to the degree it has been advanced, which is not nearly enough, as public concerns about it sadly sink into the sunset of his economic calamity). Focusing on the cancer of torture, a/k/a "harsh interrogation tactics" and the like by apologists, the unofficial official policy for which most likely started in Bagram and Guantanamo Bay but didn't really enter public consciousness until Abu Ghraib, this documentary examines the disappearance of a young Afghan taxi driver named Dilawar and his subsequent mysterious death at Bagram in 2002, relentlessly uncovering the horrific details as it burrows deeper and deeper for the information. Among them: Dilawar was beaten so badly that his legs were essentially pulped while he was still alive. All follow-up investigation has so far shown that he was guilty of nothing, but merely caught up in unfortunate circumstances; in the wrong place at the wrong time, as they say. U.S. government response: "oh no we dit-ten" alternating with "ooops." These things are important—this information has to get out. But they are formidably depressing too, and so, for better or worse, is this documentary.