Mini-Review: "Taxi to the Dark Side"

By Jake Meltzer

Published March 2, 2008

“Taxi to the Dark Side,” the most recent Oscar winner for best documentary, touches on one of the most hot-button issues in American politics today: the torture and maltreatment of suspected terrorists by the U.S. military. Director Alex Gibney gathers interviews of former interrogators, government insiders, and intelligence agents to reveal to the American people a broader perspective on Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay.

The film exposes the Bush administration’s disregard of the Geneva Convention, where specific rules were set to prevent inhumane treatment of war prisoners. One particular case where these rules are violated is that of Daliwar, a taxi driver who was detained and held in Bagram, an American war prison in Afghanistan. Here, he was tortured by American soldiers who stripped him naked, deprived him of sleep, and beat him in the legs. Barely a week after he arrived in Bagram, he was dead, innocent of any wrongdoing. To hear one of the men who interrogated him, Glen Walls, talk about how he was ordered to continue to torture Daliwar even though he believed he was innocent was a powerful indictment of military superiors.

“Taxi to the Dark Side” is not for the faint of heart. We see disturbing images of tortured prisoners and we see painful video of the people who run our country lying to our faces about the extent of the torture. This is a great film that should make us more aware and question the actions of this administration for decades to come.