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.
Comment
04/23/07
The Prisoner Or: How I Planned To Kill Tony Blair (2007)
86
%
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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... [More]
Director: Petra Epperlein, Michael Tucker
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Reviews for The Prisoner Or: How I Planned To Kill Tony Blair
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.
03/27/07
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.
03/30/07
Top CriticA depressing story, certainly, as well as moving, confusing and, at a fast 72 minutes, at once undercooked and overpadded.
03/23/07
Top CriticThe prisoner's journalistic tendencies served him well in jail: He chronicled details of his captivity, including names and serial numbers of fellow prisoners, in places guards wouldn't notice (like the inside of his boxer shorts).
03/21/07
Top CriticRetroish 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.
03/24/07
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.
03/30/07
Top CriticThe film makes clear its point about the profound failures of justice caused by aggressive attempts at arrests and detention.
03/30/07
[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.
03/30/07
Top CriticThe Prisoner or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair, a documentary with a tiny cast of characters and a modest budget, is a microscopic view of a big and ugly war.
03/22/07
Top CriticI 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.
04/04/07
A follow-up to the acclaimed Gunner Place, this docu, about one innocent Iraqui's detention and then shipment to Abu Ghraib, exhibits a restrained approach that allows its righteous indignation to grow slowly without resorting to manipulative tactics.
03/22/07
The filmmaker’s methodology backfires by undercutting the credibility of the testimony presented and overshadowing any actual miscarriage of justice.
03/31/07
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.
03/23/07
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.
03/30/07
Top Critic...it's hard not to be drawn into his admittedly horrifying tale.
09/07/06
Modest picture offers a miniature portrait of the military occupation at its most sinister and comically inept, and the mild-mannered Abbas himself makes a wry, fatalistic protagonist.
03/22/07
Top Critic... a chillingly pitch-black comedy of errors ...
04/09/07
Top CriticWhen Yunis occasionally falters, it's not because English fails him; in recounting a story as hideous, incredulous, and nightmarish as this, there are both no words, and hardly words enough.
03/20/07
Top CriticThe Prisoner is a triumph of specificity. It is one man's story, told in scrupulous and vivid detail.
03/29/07
Top CriticLatest News for The Prisoner Or: How I Planned To...
April 28, 2007:
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