The American military comes across as bungling and ineffective as protectors. If people thought we didn't know what we were doing in Iraq before, this is yet more evidence of our incompetence.

| Apr 23, 2007

... a chillingly pitch-black comedy of errors ...

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 9, 2007

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 7, 2007

I would have preferred a clearer narrative that was easier to understand, without all the comic-book gimmicks. Despite those faults, the documentary is worth seeing.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 4, 2007

The filmmaker's methodology backfires by undercutting the credibility of the testimony presented and overshadowing any actual miscarriage of justice.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 31, 2007

[Abbas'] story demands to be heard, though Tucker and Epperlein lack the material for a full feature and pad this out to 73 minutes with some incongruously playful elements.

| Mar 30, 2007

Abbas could tell his interrogators nothing they wanted to know, but everything we needed to know about their tactics.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 30, 2007

It's an angry story, but also a strangely hopeful one, in the sense of new life sprouting through a battlefield. Above all, it's personal and specific, and that is news we can use.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 30, 2007

The film makes clear its point about the profound failures of justice caused by aggressive attempts at arrests and detention.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 30, 2007

The Prisoner doesn't try to put the entire war in context or offer broad solutions. It's a focused slice of the war, covering an issue that you've probably wondered about but haven't seen in many other places.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 30, 2007

A modestly mounted, but curiously poignant little documentary which somehow -- quietly, devastatingly -- shows and tells you more than you may perhaps want to know about the dehumanization implicit in the mighty, blighted Iraqi adventure.

| Mar 30, 2007

What's troubling about the film's technique is its lack of context; we must take Yuris, who speaks serviceable English, pretty much at his word. What's troubling about his story is its ring of truth.

| Mar 30, 2007

The Prisoner is a triumph of specificity. It is one man's story, told in scrupulous and vivid detail.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Mar 29, 2007

None of The Prisoner's showy flourishes -- animation, sound effects, fancy editing -- can match the power of Abbas' stillness as he describes one man's agony in one huge hell.

| Original Score: B+ | Mar 28, 2007

Turns out that every country, every civilization, has its good eggs as well as its bad ones. What The Prisoner clearly shows us is that this Administration has no interest in learning the difference between the two.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 27, 2007

Retroish cartoon panels of Uday Hussein and torture cell blocks, thought balloons floating over live talking heads, amplified sound effects. The choice is a bold one, occasionally glib and almost derailing the seriousness of the material.

| Original Score: 3/6 | Mar 24, 2007

Consider it the single gloomiest cocktail-party story of all time.

| Original Score: C+ | Mar 24, 2007

The banality and muted despair of this endured horror is laced with the all too chilling familiarity of racist US revenge culture, like police brutality, exported to an imperialist conquest war zone and spreading like a planetary social contagion.

| Mar 23, 2007

Provides ample proof of the old adage that truth is stranger than fiction.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 23, 2007

A depressing story, certainly, as well as moving, confusing and, at a fast 72 minutes, at once undercooked and overpadded.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 23, 2007