VeteranLight I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Catangro After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Bea Swanson This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Matho The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

danieln-15525 Fits the leftist agenda.Hollywood is leftist, that's why movies and TV shows are often leftist.

Syl This disturbing documentary follows the case of Dilawar, an Afghani taxi driver, who is captured first by his countrymen and turned over to the United States military for interrogation. Dilawar would never leave alive. His death was declared a homicide on his death certificate. Dilawar was at the wrong place and wrong time during American paranoia and post September 11 world. Dilawar's death is investigated by journalists. Dilawar was beaten and tortured in humanely by American soldiers. First, this documentary is graphic with post Mortem pictures and pictures of naked detainees. The torture at Bangram and Abu Grahib is unforgivable. It does not end there but the detainees at Guantamano Bay have been isolated, sleep deprived, humiliated, and left to go mad or commit suicides as a result. The information from torture is often wrong, false, and unreliable. Water boarding is actually tame compared to the techniques used in this documentary. You must see it to believe it and understand. Torture is wrong on every level.

fwomp I often complain about the lopsidedness of documentaries. And more often than not, whenever I mention this, people pepper me with insults because they believe "that's what documentaries are designed to do." I beg to differ. Let me show you what I mean.There are some seriously stilted documentaries that look at one side (and ONLY one side) of an issue and never give credence to the other. How about an interview with someone who opposes the views that the documentarians are putting forth? How about some information that might refute what is being told? This one-sidedness is just too easy to find. Things like AFTER INNOCENCE, THE FUTURE OF FOOD, and RELIGULOUS are prime examples (there are tons more but I don't have the time nor inclination to mention them).Occasionally – if not extremely rarely – a documentary will come along that allows both sides to speak. And such is the case with the Academy Award winner TAXI TO THE DARK SIDE.The story starts and ends with the murder of Dilawar, a taxi cab driver in Afghanistan who is mistakenly picked up by U.S. forces and sent to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba for interrogation. Once there, he soon dies from injuries sustained at the hands of his captors. The middle of this documentary is the meat and potatoes of what went horribly wrong with the U.S.'s war on terror. It's a serious eye-opener. Not because it focuses on the problems the U.S. had with its detainees after 9/11, but because it allows everyone to speak about the successes and failures of torture. Yes, torture.From the men on the ground (staff sergeants and privates) to the President's advisory attorney at the U.S. Dept. of Justice (John Woo), we get to hear from just about everyone on the topic of the incarcerated detainees and their treatment at the hands of untrained and unprepared interrogators. It is astonishing, too, to learn that not a single person above the rank of sergeant was punished for the death of Dilawar (nor any other detainee who was abused). You mean to tell me that these grunts were responsible for ...everything? Give me a break! I don't delude myself any longer. The U.S. (either overtly or covertly) now uses "enhanced interrogation techniques" (e.g. torture). Make no doubt about it. We do it because we want to protect ourselves. But at what cost to our own moral compass? We claim to follow The Geneva Convention, but do we? Not as far as I can tell. And don't take my word for it. Watch ALL of the people in this documentary talk about this very subject and come to your own conclusions.

moviesleuth2 Because this is a documentary, I have to go about writing this review differently. First I will write about how it's constructed and the information it provides, then I will write my own personal response to the film.Alex Gibney's "Taxi to the Dark Side" is a tell-all about how the U.S. government's position on torture really operates. There is no doubt that this is a controversial subject, but it is essential viewing.Credit has to go to Gibney for not trying to make an attack on the Bush Administration and its practices. Unlike Michael Moore, he lets the information speak for itself. If there is something that deflects blame from someone that we previously thought should be held accountable, he still uses it. On the flip side, he lets no one who is guilty of something get away with it.The information comes fast and furiously, but it is clearly illustrated. Voiceovers, images, and interviews are used to great effect. "Taxi to the Dark Side" is a tad long, but Gibney has a lot to say.Now for my thoughts..."You put people in a crazy situation and people do crazy things."--one of the former interrogators interviewed.Indeed, the times we live in are "crazy," especially for the armed forces fighting overseas. It seemed that after 9/11 everything changed. The terrorist attacks on that day shocked the world, and the American people wanted justice. As an American, I can't blame them.But the question I ask is, at what cost do we want justice? If we don't uphold the values that we are governed by, then what are we protecting? What's the point of fighting if we can't live the way we want to, and the way that millions have given their lives for us to be able to live like in the past? After viewing the film, it seems to me that this stemmed from us wanting quick justice even though it couldn't be obtained. The pressure to do so caused us to act irrationally, and this is the result. Everyone knows that torture doesn't work, as victims are more likely to say what their abusers want to hear than that we simply don't know. But we bypass all the laws to get answers to prove that we're doing something.Yet this answer seems like incomplete reasoning. If this is the case, than why would John Yoo, who authored memos that exploited loopholes to give Bush and his cabinet expansive powers on this issue, and to give us leverage to disregard the Geneva Convention, which is supposed to protect people from these kinds of interrogation. Just because they may not be protected by the Geneva Convention, does that mean that we can torture them? Do they not have the same rights as someone who is? While we can blame people like Lyndie England, who committed the torture, Gibney says while their actions were reprehensible, and they did take their actions too far (and I think they should have been punished), he also portrays them as scapegoats. The soldiers had no real training, and were given vague, at best, guidelines at how to interrogate them.Furthermore, Gibney proves how important our right to a trial is. A shocking number of terrorists are kept in detention and tortured because they were handed over to the US by the Pakistanis and Iraqi army. But they were put in detention without a trial, and most with no evidence (and sometimes they were given a huge bounty in exchange). So how can we really know that these people are actually insurgents? Some are, but how many? Even if you're liberal or a conservative, this is a must see.