The Prisoner Or: How I Planned To Kill Tony Blair (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.

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 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.