As I am not one who watches the news every night or reads the paper every morning, a movie like Taxi to the Dark Side can be a real shock to my system. This harrowing, well-made documentary exposes the illegal torture practices the U.S. adapted when questioning possible terrorists after September 11^th. Or are they illegal? That’s one of the film’s points, that the laws themselves are actually open to interpretation. Either way, they are certainly inhumane. It’s no wonder I was welcomed to the screening by Amnesty International.

The film is directed and narrated by Alex Gibney, who also made the great 2005 documentary Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room and co-produced another of 2007’s Oscar nominated documentaries, the similar-themed No End in Sight. Gibney’s late father Frank was a U.S. interrogator during World War II and his thoughts on the current situation are presented during the closing credits.

The film attaches its emotional connection to an innocent Afghani Taxi driver who was picked up along with his three passengers in connection to a rocket’s devastation of a U.S.-run base. He was transported to a prison facility in Bagram in 2002 where he died in detention. His death was attributed to a pre-existing condition that was aggravated by his poor living conditions and violent treatment. His official death certificate listed the cause of death as homicide, but still the American powers-that-be refused to acknowledge that there were any ill-advised methods of interrogation being used.

That is, until photographs surfaced from another prison camp, run by the same officials, in Abu Ghraib, Iraq. These photographs were the most disturbing aspect of the entire film for me. Detainees were not only beaten, but forced to strip naked and perform various disturbing sexual acts. All while their U.S. abusers pose for the cameras giving the rest of America the thumbs up.

The film features interviews with a few of the soldiers who were assigned to these prisons and given these assignments. The two soldiers featured most prominently in the photographs were not named in the film, but I learned from Wikipedia that they were both sentenced to prison: one for ten years, the other for three.

What we quickly learn from these interviews is that these are generally decent guys thrown into an awful situation and given vague but abusive direction. I could not help but relate this real-life situation to the fictional film A Few Good Men, where soldiers are arrested for performing a “Code Red” on a fellow soldier at the behest of their superiors. Of course, in real life there’s no Tom Cruise heroically breaking down the superior officers truly responsible, and aside from being made truly to look truly foolish in this documentary (as they had previously been in No End in Sight and Fahrenheit 9/11), the decision makers get off scot-free.

The film also interviews British Citizen Moazzam Begg, who was wrongly arrested, imprisoned, and tortured for twenty months as a suspected terrorist without ever receiving a legal hearing. Begg points out the irony that his only opportunity to see the inside of a courtroom came when he was approached about testifying against some of the soldiers being tried with war crimes.

The film does a fine job of blending shock value with information. One of the most interesting scenes occurs when a group of the press is given a tour of the detention facilities in Guantanamo Bay where—lo and behold—the prisoners can play on basketball and soccer courts, drink Pepsi on Wednesdays, and relax in the La-Z-Boys which furnish the interrogation rooms.

The press agent informs us that happily no detainee has ever died at GTMO, but the film quickly informs us via subtitle that since this interview two have committed suicide and another 81 are on hunger strikes. Throughout the entire film it was interesting to see how rapidly the numbers have changed in just the last few years since these interviews were done.

Although this is a film I hope I never see again, it’s the kind of film that I am thankful to have seen, simply because it helps to open my eyes to some of the devastating things that are happening in this world. It serves to help me enjoy the life I have all the more.

Taxi to the Dark Side is rated R for “disturbing images, and content involving torture and graphic nudity.” This film is not for the faint of heart. The images presented in this film are some of the most disturbing and ugly images ever put on film. Even more disturbing is the fact that they are not just the figment of some writer’s imagination.

Courtesy of a local publicist, Jeff attended a promotional screening of Taxi to the Dark Side.