A MUST-SEE, which you probably won't

It won this year's Best Documentary award. It comes from the fellow who made ENRON: The Smartest Guys in the Room. It deals with one (yes, there are so many) of our most pressing moral/social/image problems. But since that problem is America's countenancing and use of torture in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo -- not to mention all the unknown places used for "rendition" around the globe (see the new-to-DVD TORTURED, for a look this sort of thing on our home ground) -- audiences will run for cover rather than for the box-office or, now that TAXI TO THE DARK SIDE has reached DVD, for the living room sofa.

I myself admit to not really looking forward to having to watch this film. It is, however, made with skill, feeling, intelligence and the kind of questioning needed to manage a good investigative documentary. While much of what I heard and saw, I already knew, writer/director Alex Gibney (above right) shows us quite clearly and convincingly something I had not considered: how and why the Bush/Cheney administration has broken America's military just has it has broken so much else -- the Justice Department, FEMA, our energy and environment, very nearly our entire federal government. Mr. Gibney does not tell us in so many words about the destruction of the military, nor do his talking heads, but the message seeps through interview after interview. Of course we knew there were problems here: low recruitment (often of exactly the wrong people) and a force stretched to the breaking point. But now we see what our military has become, who is responsible, and how only -- as ever -- the grunts, rather than their officers in charge, take the blame.

It is a horrible picture that Taxi to the Dark Side leaves us with, even though Gibney's final talking head offers a question that might possibly be seen as hopeful. Over the final credits, the director's own father (now deceased), a man who in is own day handled interrogations for the military, talks about the futility and waste of what has come to pass. As I say, this one is a must-see.