This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 9th, 2008 at 9:33 pm and is filed under Documentaries, Drama, Movie Reviews, NEW ON VIDEO, R. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Director: Mat Whitecross, Michael Winterbottom
Starring: Riz Ahmed, Farhad Harun, Waqar Siddiqui, Afran Usman, Shahid Iqbal, Sher Khan,
The Road To Guantanamo is a riveting mix of dramatic re-enactments and interviews with the ‘Tipton Three’, three British citizens captured with Taliban forces in Afghanistan shortly after 9/11. The dramatic scenes here come across as chillingly authentic, though from time to time, it does slip into scenes that feel like a TV re-enactment. This is offset by the mesmerizing tale of three men that went through a harrowing experience that is beyond even our own imaginations.
The three principal characters here, are each portrayed by actors in the dramatized film portions, and appear as themselves during interspersed interview segments. The first is Asif Iqbal (Afran Usman), who traveled from Britain to Pakistan with three friends to get married. His friends were Ruhel (Farhad Harun), Shafiq (Riz Ahmed) and Monir (Waqar Siddiqui), who went missing and is believed to have been killed in Afghanistan. The three friends decided to take a side trip to Afghanistan where they were lost ,and misled, into a warzone, where they end up being taken prisoner as suspected Taliban members. This is where their incarceration starts and the story really begins.
I knew nothing of these three, before this film and it is an eye-opener about the confused and dangerous state of 2001 Afghanistan, and about the treatment of prisoners taken in the War on Terror. The end result is gripping and terrifying, and will be enjoyed by politically aware movie viewers.
