The Road to Guantanamo Movie Review

"The Road to Guantanamo" is a terrifying and enlightening first-hand account of three British citizens of Pakistani descent who were held for two years without charges in the American military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba after they were captured by Northern Alliance soldiers in Afghanistan and handed over to the American military occupiers. Known as the "Tipton Three" (in reference to their home town in Britain), the three young men were eventually released and returned to Britain, although no formal charges were ever filed against them at any time during their ordeal.

Part documentary, part dramatization, the film chronicles the bewildering sequence of events that led from the initial quartet setting out from Tipton in the British Midlands for a wedding in Pakistan, to their naively crossing the border in response to a local Iman’s call for men to travel to Afghanistan to give aid to the people just as the U.S. began its bombing campaign, to the eventual capture of three of them by the Northern Alliance and their imprisonment in Camp X-Ray and later at Camp Delta in Guantanamo. Co-Directors Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross recount the harrowing and courageous journey of these young men, their friendships and shared tragedies, as they go from the safety of their small-town teenage existence to the heart of the "war on terror."

The film stars non-pros Arfan Usman, Farhad Harun, Rizwan Ahmed, and Waqar Siddiqui who play the unlucky British Muslim boys: Asif Iqbal, Ruhel Ahmed, Shafiq Rasul, and Monir Ali. Amid the chaos of war torn Afghanistan, the boys mix in with the fleeing Taliban fighters. Monir becomes separated from his friends and to this day has never been heard from again. Although limited time is devoted to character or relationship development due to the film’s tightly paced sequence of events, the fact that the survivors tell the story in their own words adds impressive realism.

"The Road to Guantanamo" is directed in a cinema verite style that brilliantly mixes interviews from the Tipton Three with dramatic reenactments of the events that beset them including graphic depiction of prisoner abuse at Camp X-Ray and Camp Delta. In one of the more disturbing scenes we see a prisoner tethered to the floor of a cell in what’s known as a "stress position" and subjected to ear shattering music for hours at a time. The end result is a scathing indictment of military power that exposes disturbing truths about brutal policies and abuses committed in the name of a supposed war on terrorism by a country that prides itself on being a strong champion of human rights, but in reality has blatantly trampled all over them and ignored the most basic provisions of the Geneva Conventions.

Cinematographer Marcel Zyskind uses a hand held camera to capture the action intimately and lend immediacy to the young men’s horrific journey. Intermittent flashbacks reveal their normal middle-class existence before their ruthless imprisonment and interrogation as alleged enemy combatants. Bush, Blair, and Rumsfeld appear in archival newsreel footage that puts the responsibility for all of this squarely on their shoulders. A lightening paced editing style keeps you focused and on the edge of your seat, and the film’s driving score builds momentum while adding uncertainty and suspense to the proceedings. The colorful location work in Pakistan, Iran and Afganistan is exceptional. Production design is by Mark Digby. The film was shot on a budget of a little more than $2 million.

"The Road to Guantanamo" is a timely, compelling, and powerfully directed film that exposes the Bush Administration’s insistent declaration that Islamic prisoners are being treated humanely at U.S. detention centers for what it is: a lie. Winterbottom and Whitecross remind us that while the Tipton Three were eventually released in March 2004, nearly 500 prisoners still remain in Guantanamo. Recently, three of them, two Saudis and a Yemeni, committed suicide by hanging themselves in their cells, provoking outrage in the international community and growing calls for the detention centers to be closed. Not unexpectedly, Camp commander Harry Harris chose to marginalize the victims even in death, by characterizing their suicides as "not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us," explaining "they have no regard for life, either ours or their own." As this film’s graphic depiction of routine prisoner abuse suggests, the Guantanamo camp is likely to be considered one of the greatest stains on the human rights record of the U.S.