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The Prisoner Or: How I Planned To Kill Tony Blair (2007)
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Reviews Counted:28
Fresh:24
Rotten:4
Average Rating:6.9/10
Runtime: 72 mins
Genre: Dramas
Synopsis: Petra Epperlain and Michael Tucker's documentary uses humor to explore the heartbreaking story of an innocent man's imprisonment. Yunis is an Iraqi journalist living happily with his family in... Petra Epperlain and Michael Tucker's documentary uses humor to explore the heartbreaking story of an innocent man's imprisonment. Yunis is an Iraqi journalist living happily with his family in Baghdad. Yunis is accused of devising a plan to assassinate Tony Blair shortly after American troops arrive in Iraq in 2003. With no idea how or why he's been targeted, Yunis struggles to escape a system which is revealed here to be full of bizarre inconsistencies, cruelty, and wrongdoing. In an attempt to highlight the ridiculous nature of its central events, this documentary incorporates original pop-art style illustrations, home videos, and testimonies from former Abu Ghraib Prison guard Benjamin Thompson. [More]
Director: Petra Epperlein, Michael Tucker
Director: Petra Epperlein, Michael Tucker
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Reviews for The Prisoner Or: How I Planned To Kill Tony Blair
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.
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.
The filmmaker’s methodology backfires by undercutting the credibility of the testimony presented and overshadowing any actual miscarriage of justice.
[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.
Abbas could tell his interrogators nothing they wanted to know, but everything we needed to know about their tactics.
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.
The film makes clear its point about the profound failures of justice caused by aggressive attempts at arrests and detention.
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.
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.
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.
The Prisoner is a triumph of specificity. It is one man's story, told in scrupulous and vivid detail.
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.
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.
Latest News for The Prisoner Or: How I Planned To...
April 28, 2007:
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