Taxi to the Dark Side
Composite Score: 84.27
Featuring: Alex Gibney, Brian Keith Allen, Moazzam Begg, Christopher Beiring, Willie Brand, Brian Cammack, William Cassara, Doug Cassel, Jack Cloonan, Damien Corsetti, and Thomas Curtis
Director: Alex Gibney
Writer: Alex Gibney
Genres: Documentary, Crime, History, War
MPAA Rating: R for disturbing images, and content involving torture and graphic nudity
Box Office: $294,309 worldwide
Why should you Watch This Film?
Taxi to the Dark Side is the Academy-Award-winning documentary from Alex Gibney about U.S. torture, interrogation, and incarceration practices during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, focusing on the treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, Bagram, and Guantanamo Bay. The film looks at the atrocities committed by the U.S. in these locations through an investigative lens, working backwards from various tragic deaths to unveil the root causes – a government that sees itself as above international law and their team of lawyers that ensure they remain that way. It’s a scathing critique, not necessarily of the “War on Terror”, but of the practices that proliferated throughout its duration and the tragic victims of its new rules of engagement, both the undertrained military personnel who took the brunt of the blame and the unlawfully and often unjustly incarcerated victims.
Why shouldn’t you Watch This Film?
While the message and information presented in Taxi to the Dark Side are great, and while its conclusion is a truly scathing indictment of the modern American war machine, the overall feel and execution of the documentary feels pretty par for the course. It’s a mind-numbingly conventional true crime documentary in terms of its look and feel. For all of its strong messaging and moving images, the film comes across as nothing more than a history class movie day when you watch it. I am left blown away by the information but underwhelmed by its method of presentation, which holds it back to some extent as a “great” documentary.
So wait, why should you Watch This Film?
While I (and I think many audiences as well) might wish for a bit stronger style from Gibney’s documentary, his substance presented in Taxi to the Dark Side is unquestionably provocative. It says the quiet part out loud, pointing out the hypocrisy and unreliability of the use of torture as a means to procure any sort of intelligence from prisoners with expert testimonies and tours of actual American military holding facilities. It doesn’t just stop at critiquing Guantanamo and similar institutions, though; it presses on, focusing much of its runtime on the lack of preparation given to the members of the American military tasked with carrying out these heinous acts through interviews with convicted low-ranking soldiers whose lives and livelihoods were ruined because they were hung out to dry after following orders. For Gibney and his team, the problem is not just torture but the entire philosophy of the American military industrial complex. The problem is this belief that, since we are the world’s most formidable superpower, we get to set our own rules of engagement and that any enemy of our state is immediately less-than and undeserving of basic human rights. The closing statement from Gibney’s father, Frank (an American interrogator during both World War II and Korea), brings home the fullness of the documentary’s message: There was a time when American methods had a semblance of moral high ground (we weren’t the Nazis), but our methods now are just as bad (and sometimes worse) than those of our enemies, and it’s not even that effective.
Taxi to the Dark Side presents a clear and unpleasant look at American military intelligence gathering practices, offering a clear moral (and sometimes practical) condemnation of our current modes of torture and incarceration, which earns the film recognition as a bold and great documentary. While it lacks a bit in style, it more than makes up for it in substance. This film is currently available to stream on Peacock, Tubi, or Freevee for anyone looking to check it out in the near future.
