Excellent adaptation.

Best movie ever!

Absolutely Fantastic

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Combine the above sentiment voiced by one of the military men positioned as a prison guard in Iraq with the 'pressure to produce intelligence', and you wind up with the kind of conditions that existed at Abu Ghraib. Was it right? Of course not, and when all human dignity is taken away from a person with the brutal tactics shown in the documentary, it's difficult to understand that there may have been another side to the equation. I'm not condoning the actions of the personnel shown beating and humiliating their captives, but a film like this is never intended to show the flip side of the coin, that is, the atrocities committed by the other side. With entities like the Taliban or present day ISIS, there is no ambiguity in the way they treat their victims. Headless corpses don't get a chance to tell their side of things.

Academy Award winner for Best Documentary Feature, this Alex Gibney film probes into the use of torture by the US as part of their War on Terror. The title comes from the humble occupation of one Afghani who died at the hands of his US torturers, with the overhanging question being how many other innocents have also suffered. While the documentary comes off as incredibly one-sided, never mentioning useful information gained during torture and making it seem like every single person ever tortured by the US was innocent, it is still compelling stuff, exposing some scary systematic issues with the approach to torture taken by the US. At the film's most shocking, we see how some soldiers chose to take things "one step too far... have some fun and take some photos", with the fine line between torture and sadism highlighted. The individual soldiers are not demonised alone though, with the film often mentioning how much pressure was placed onto them to gain useful intelligence; it is almost no wonder that some took things so far. The film additionally looks at an intriguing range of torture processes, with a fascinating "sensory deprivation" method that many soldiers found more effective than physical pain. This is not the easiest film to watch with its candid insight to inhumanity in the face of incredible pressure, but it is thought-provoking stuff, biased as it may be.

This was a great and troubling movie about the U.S. military's use of torture. You will not easily forget scenes and details from this movie, especially because at the heart, it is the story of an innocent man murdered by Americans who think they are protecting our nation. It left me uneasy and with questions that I am still thinking about, years after seeing the movie. Where was the oversight from elected officials? How will we ever end the war on terror?Alex Gibney is a talented filmmaker and this is among his better films. I would strongly recommend that you see it. I also hope that if Alex is reading IMDb, he decides to make another movie about how the War on Terror has continued under a different president.

Taxi to the Dark Side (2007) **** (out of 4) Excellent, Oscar-winning documentary taking a look at the use of torture during the Bush administration. The documentary takes a look at a couple men who were beaten to death at the Bagram Prison including an Afghan taxi driver who picked up three passengers and was never heard of again until he was murdered inside the prison. Throughout the documentary we get interviews with experts on torture, journalists who broke the story and also with actual soldiers who were involved with the torture. Director Alex Gibney does a terrific job at looking at everything involved in this including the political and moral sides of it. The torture aspect is something that there are so many rules around that it would seem like an obvious thing not to do but we then learn about various loopholes that were used so that terrorists could be abused in order to get more information about terror plots. We also get to know how many of the soldiers who were arrested were made to look like bad apples yet they said they were just following orders. The documentary takes a look at all the torture acts ranging from water boarding, sexual humiliations and of course the actual physical abuse. The film shows some pretty graphic photos and videos so those squeamish will certainly want to be prepared to look away from the screen. The documentary is broken into several different segments with each looking at a different aspect of the story. One of the most interesting pieces involves the taxi driver because it turned out he was an innocent man who had no connection to terrorism. The documentary is one that really makes you think because if you go into it feeling that terrorists do deserve to be tortured, you're quickly reminded that several innocent people were being tortured and killed. The film even admits that many people believe that torture should be allowed under certain circumstances. TAXI TO THE DARK SIDE is a very disturbing documentary that shows some ugly images and makes you wonder who was in charge of all of this stuff. It's not an easy film to sit through but it's worth watching and discussing.