Road To Gitmo

You could imagine my shock when I discovered that Road To Guantanamo was not a long lost Bing Crosby/Bob Hope movie. Actually it is a documentary account of three British Muslims who were captured in Afghanistan and held as suspected Al Qaida terrorists for several years in Guantanamo. This documentary is of course barely that given that there is very little documentation that the filmmakers could no doubt get their hands on.

They make up for this with dramatizations of what happened. This includes a very long, drawn out detailed accounting of their time in Pakistan and Afghanistan leading up to the US invasion. The dramatization is intercut with interview scenes of the real men involved. The film is naturally one sided since the US military would clearly refuse to cooperate but that isn't what makes it problematic as a film.

It feels like retread of all the things we already know to be true. There could have been a powerful story told here. They could have interviewed the family of the three. They could have shown efforts by their lawyers or advocates in trying to free them. All of this is absent. In the end it feels like a 45 minute special than a feature length documentary.