The Road to Guantanamo

Perhaps there is more than one Michael Winterbottom. The history of cinema is full of Big Reputations built on very short CVs, but this guy must be working on several projects simultaneously and anyone lucky to get close enough will be caught up in the slipstream. He's the I K Brunel of the silver screen. However, Whitecross must have handled the bulk of the work here, and a lucky few at the Bristol Watershed, England, will have met him with the three British protagonists of this adventure (16th March), who relate their experiences intercut with actors and archive footage in what may prove to be the seminal event of 21st Century cinema. It's certainly the most powerful experience you are liable to have in the theatre. This reviewer has not seen it on TV, nor downloaded it to PC, but my guess is that it will retain some of its force. Undoubtedly much of this force is because it's a true story, and one which connects with us all, through our governments' recreation of the Cold War strategy for slicing up the world into areas of influence, and using the artifice of 'bogeymen' (Pinkos, Martians, Yankees, Muslims) to keep the populace down. But the secret of great art is to make it look easy. In lesser hands this could have been an exercise in widescreen bathos. And recognising the gift from real life to the film maker in the scene where one of the guards exposes his cultural commonality with one of these 'dangerous terrorists', asking him to perform a rap, is just one example. The confusion of Afghanistan and Pakistan as the bombs fall and the invaders take over is totally convincing. An eyes-open nightmare full of dust and colliding waves of refugees followed by the interminable grind of terror, insults from thugs and 'cultured' interrogators, boredom and torture suffered by the captives in a situation that Kafka and Orwell could never have imagined. This is a trite comparison, I know, but violence is trite, and banal. If you see any one film this year, make it this one. CLIFF HANLEY

Even if a third of what the Tipton Three alleged to have happened to them is true, that should outrage all Americans.

But since there seems to be this belief - perpetuated by Dubya and his cronies - that this administration is somehow doing all this to protect us Americans from the bad guys, there is no outrage that we torture prisoners, hold them without charges or access to counsel, deprive them of civil liberties, all in the name of security. What poppycock!

Michael Winterbottom's film does not answer an important question - exactly what kind of "help" were these three chaps going to provide in Afghanistan? However, what happened to them should embarrass all of us.

Our foreign policy is so dumb - we prohibit trade with and travel to Cuba because it's a communist nation, but have no qualms about trading with or allowing travel to China and Vietnam - and our leaders so hypocritical.

Dubya claims to have freed Iraq from a brutal dictator (who, incidentally, was someone we supported not too long ago, when Dubya's dad was veep, to be exact, and Rummy was shaking hands with Saddam), and yet the people running Iraq today seem no better. They're still torturing people, violent militias carry out retribution killings, and our leaders stick their heads in the sand and say everything's alright.

"The Road to Guantanamo" is shot as a pseudo-documentary. The Tipton Three are portrayed as likable lugs who got caught up in something they never intended. There's an element of black comedy to all this - they keep their senses of humor as they recount the horrible, distasteful and despicable manner in which they're treated.

That we would have had an American pretending to be British to try and coerce these three men doesn't surprise me in the least. After all, it turns out Dubya considered painting the UN logo on a plane to tempt Saddam to shoot it down so we could have a reason to wage war. (Gulf of Tonkin, anyone?)

This is an incredibly difficult, at times harrowing, film to watch. There are those of us who still, foolishly perhaps, believe in the American ideal. A nation that stands for human rights and decent treatment of prisoners. But, I know, reality is far different. We have a Supreme Court justice who scoffs at giving Gitmo prisoners their day in court and a government that believes the Geneva Conventions are antiquated.

We apparently want to show the world we're the beacon of freedom and treat everyone - including alleged criminals - with certain rights, such as due process. And that's what we're trying to instill in Iraq and Afghanistan. But, in practice, we do exactly the opposite.

"The Road to Guantanmo" works because Winterbottom never lets go, never eases up to allow us to feel comfortable. Watching what happens to the Tipton Three is awfully disquieting. It is shameful that we behave like this. What's more worrisome is there seems to be such a lack of outrage among Americans that we're doing this. This administration (and its blowhard allies) have done such a wonderful job convincing Americans that speaking out against their policies is tantamount to being unpatriotic.

I realize many will reject Winterbottom's film because it doesn't cast the United States in all honorable light. It shows how vicious, uncaring and brutal we are, even though our leaders continue to deny everything.

I can only hope that years from now, we will be thoroughly ashamed of how our government treated people in the war on terror, just as we now feel shame for how we treated Japanese-Americans during WWII.

"The Road to Guantanamo" is an important film. I hope now that it has an American distributor, more people will be exposed to it. I am sure the right-wing demagogues will attack it as anti-American and tell us that seeing it would be unpatriotic. (Then again, I don't need OxyContin to function daily.)

The MPAA banned the initial poster for this film because it depicted a man with his wrists tied and a burlap sack over his head and that apparently is too much for our children to see. It's quite alright expose kids to horror-movie posters, but letting them see depictions of some of the despicable acts of our government is bad?

Because of AMPAS' dumb rules, I am certain this film won't be eligible for any Oscars. (It already has been shown on TV in the UK and is available on DVD there.) But "The Road to Guantanamo" must be seen by as many Americans as possible. You watch it and wonder, where has all our decency gone?

Clean cut, sharp and poignant, this is a documentary of those the British press named the "Tipton Three". Three young Englishmen tell their story of a wedding trip to Pakistan and an unplanned journey into Afghanistan. Victims of circumstance, their tale leads to incarceration in Guantanamo Bay and the apparently shocking treatment that ensued.

Whilst the story is told purely from the perspective of the detainees, there is never any point at which you really doubt the content of the film. In no way does the portrayal of events seem exaggerated or biased so as to evoke a stronger reaction from the audience. In parts sequences seem almost void of emotion in terms of their description, and surprisingly, the effect is to make it even more hard hitting. Not overcooking the trauma means what can only be assumed as a factual depiction of horrifying circumstances comes across quite superbly.

There are points where you can question the realism of the young men's decisions. For example, the point from which they want to leave Kabul back for Pakistan only to find themselves trapped with the Taliban is a little scantily dealt with. This may or may not be wholly accurate, and of course they felt compelled to follow those they felt were standing up for their religion, but from the individual interview footage you can't help feel they were impressionable youths just following their noses, lost in the surreal adventure of it all.

Perfectly paced, the film spends just the right amount of time on each area/location of the story. Winterbottom nicely interweaves footage from British television news to prompt recollection of the perspective from which the public saw the events in Afghanistan. And with a good balance of acted reconstruction and subject interview, both the drama and technicalities feel great. Is there no style or subject this man can't handle?

When I watched 'The Road to Guantánamo', it was with the view that it would give a well-balanced look at Guantanamo and what is supposed to be happening in the camp. Instead, I have to agree with criticism that this was film was not only very anti-American but gave the impression the whole of Britain hated America.

I can't complain about the acting, which was first rate, especially when you consider this was a debut for most of the actors. Also, the actual plot (if you see it as fictional) was involving and gritty and that is why I do give the film a five-out-of-ten rating.

However, I loathed the fact the producers made out this was a true story and the events played out just as depicted in the film. No-one knows exactly why these men were in Afghanistan and I find it hard they were there out of purely innocent reasons. These were not sweet little boys plucked off the streets of London by the Big Bad Americans, they were grown men more than old enough to know what they were doing and they were caught with Afghan soldiers fighting against US troops. Also, we're just expected to take their word that they were tortured and abused when no-one knows exactly what went on in Guantánamo (I find it hard to believe the Americans would have been so heavy-handed on three Britons who had access to a lawyer).

I certainly don't think the Americans are innocents in all of this (the Afghan prisoners of Guantánamo should have access to lawyers) but they are far from the evil this film made them out to be. And they are probably more innocent than these three pretend to be. If anything, the only crime the Americans have really committed in my mind is not coming to take Abu Hamza off to their Cuban camp since the UK is so wrapped up in soft EU laws that we are forced to let this proved terrorist remain here in a lap of luxury.

As a work of fiction, this is a well-portrayed film but it just didn't ask enough questions. Why did these three feel the need to leave the UK for Afghanistan? Why were they so stupid to remain in the country if they were there by mistake? If they were so innocent, why were they caught in the heat of the fighting? Where is the actual physical evidence they were tortured?

This docu-drama focuses on the story of the 'Tipton Three' - young guys from Birmingham who went to Pakistan to organise a wedding, decided to pop over to Afghanistan (I can only assume through naivety, ignorance and a misguided sense of adventure) to 'help' (though it appeared that little effort was made) and ended up getting embroiled in the conflict, captured with Taliban fighters and subsequently picked up by US Marines for the crime of speaking English in a foreign country. From this point 'til their release, they are essentially told that they are Al Qaeda in the hope that they'll admit to what is obviously not true.

If you can put yourself in their places, this is a harrowing film. (I spent a lot of it with my hand over my mouth...!) Being in a situation where you are being bullied and tortured - via some truly horrible methods and treatment - into admitting you're something you're not, with no means of proving your innocence must be...well, I can only imagine. I have every respect with the way they seemed to deal with it, especially given the candid way they discuss it in the documentary inserts that regularly appear throughout the movie.

For those who think it's unbalanced: I understand. However, it is THEIR story. Certain troops are shown in a human light, though let's face it: from what the film tells us, we're dealing with a situation involving the US equivalent of the SS… You want the other side of the story? Listen to any George W. Bush press conference.

The acting is natural, the story flows, some of the shots are dramatically documentary-like and I felt that it fully deserved the praise it's received. Sadly, I feel that the only people who will watch this are the ones who are aware of the issues already, while middle-America will, I dare say, completely ignore it. Either way, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend spending 95 minutes of your time taking it all in. Sleeping afterwards might be a problem though. It was for me.