Dirty Wars points to a series of terrible crimes, but rejects drawing any serious conclusions from them, leaving its audience suspended in mid-air.

| Feb 27, 2021

These are small, intimate tragedies, so oddly suited to the cell phone camera, which is meant to capture what's going on in our lives.

| Feb 3, 2020

It's like a 1970s conspiracy thriller fronted by a voracious gumshoe -- only in place of laconic wit lies moral indignation.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 6, 2019

It's scary stuff, and though director Richard Rowley sometimes milks the thriller overtones too forcefully, Scahill explores the subject with admirable clarity.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 2, 2018

You become uncomfortably aware of scene-staging. How much re-enacting have we got going on here?... Once you become aware of it, this creeping subversion tends to gnaw away at the rest of the film.

| Apr 6, 2016

Dirty Wars is frightening and it's not over.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Aug 5, 2015

Dirty Wars is challenging in a way few films are.

| Original Score: B | Apr 8, 2014

This documentary is at least in theory non-political and not intended as overview of the past thirteen years. Instead, the filmmakers insist, it captures a moment in time on a downward spiral.

| Feb 28, 2014

An infuriating and depressing look at how American foreign policy and warfare have been transformed in highly undemocratic ways, and a reminder of what real journalism looks like.

| Feb 24, 2014

"Dirty Wars" may lack the nuance and design of an Errol Morris documentary, but it is nonetheless the most important and searing documentary of 2013. See it. Talk about it.

| Original Score: A- | Feb 16, 2014

This is a very disturbing film. From a journalistic point of view, it would be better to have more documentation for the claims made in this film, but enough evidence is presented to raise concerns about these secret wars.

| Original Score: B | Dec 8, 2013

Not quite as tight as it needs to be, especially when it comes to building links between its various strands, this is nevertheless an intriguing documentary which contains some powerful interview material.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 2, 2013

A tense, shocking US documentary that plays out like an episode of The Wire, though in this case it's not a war on drugs that's being fought (and lost), but the war on terror.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 29, 2013

Government sanctioned atrocities and journalist Jeremy Scahill fight for top billing in this investigative doc.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 29, 2013

We should be shocked. But the camera is too busy making a hero of reporter-presenter Jeremy Scahill.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 28, 2013

The movie has rather silly, Bourne-style thriller graphics, which are unnecessary: it has an important story to tell.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 28, 2013

A fearless and passionately directed documentary, Dirty Wars is a gripping and thought-provoking film fuelling the heated debate about the ethics of the US government and military.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 28, 2013

[A] gripping investigative doc, which plays out like a classic conspiracy thriller as it follows a trail of clues to the heart of darkness.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 26, 2013

Hard-hitting stuff and tough medicine for American foreign policy loyalists.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 25, 2013

Though awkwardly assembled, with an overemphatic voiceover, it's chilling stuff.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 25, 2013