This stomach-churning expose puts an anguished face on the brutality exalted by Saddam Hussein's former regime in Iraq. With some of the most shocking, unrelenting footage ever released on DVD, it's enough to make even the staunchest anti-war critic rethink their position that alleviating human suffering was not a legitimate reason for military action. We see tongues cut out and cruel beatings designed to induce kidney failure. We see public shootings and chain-wielding prison guards. It's truly more frightening than any work of Stephen King or Dean Koontz.
Yet the footage goes beyond Saddam's devastation. Uncensored footage of post-Saddam Iraqis gleefully stringing up the charred corpses of two American contractors is sickening. The new enemies in Iraq, the insurgents and terrorists, are also profiled with several hostage beheadings, again uncensored. It's all intended to shock, and in that it more than succeeds.
Unquestionably the biggest drawback in BURIED IN THE SAND are the studio segments hosted by an unknown named Mark Taylor. Taylor tries hard to make the compilation tasteful, but his appearances cheapen the entire documentary. He turns the production into a piece of right-wing propaganda, which it needn't be. It would have been much better to employ an unseen narrator and perhaps interviews with experts to help us digest what we are seeing. By marketing this as an anti-liberal film, the producers ensured they would change nobody's mind about the war and instantly alienate half of a divided nation. That's too bad, because taken more seriously, BURIED IN THE SAND could have been more.
