Based on a true story, this film rivets the viewer to the screen with the explosive, blow-by-blow details of homegrown terrorism and the consequences of those who are caught.  Three young British Muslim men fly to Pakistan – they say for a wedding – just days after the 9/11 attacks.  From there, they take a wild, reckless and dangerous journey into Afghanistan, just as coalition bombs blast away at Al-Qaeda strongholds.  When the men are captured, their journey to hell begins.  Inside the walls of the infamous Guantánamo prison, they come face to face with the harsh reality of America's war on terror, until British intelligence makes a startling discovery.

Critique

The Road to Guantánamo is a story of the War on Terror – or, to be more specific, George W. Bush’s War on Terror – gone horribly, horribly wrong.  The story in this film is no different than the many, many allegations that have come out since the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.  There is so much mystery and bad juju surrounding that particular base that it is surprising that we have not seen a film like this before now.

The film is a mix of drama and documentary, intercutting interviews and news footage with a strikingly realistic reenactment of four friends’ nightmare trip around the world.  Ruhel, Asif, Shafiq, and Monir are four Britons who trek off to Pakistan for Asif’s wedding.  They are of Pakistani descent, Muslim, but they are Britons too, and in the beginning, with their classic UK accents and easygoing attitudes, these guys seem like the last four people who belong in a terrorist detention camp.

They arrive in Pakistan, and while Asif is off with his family, the rest of them play tourist, having fun and enjoying themselves.  The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan has just begun, and in a fit of idealism, they decide to cross the border to see what they can do to aid the Afghani people.  The border scene is chaotic, a mob of people trying to go both ways.  They cross easily.  I don’t know where or how this was filmed, if it was at an actual border crossing or if it was somehow recreated (this is where something like an audio commentary would come in handy), but it feels authentic; it looks like every third world refugee border crossing that has made the newspapers.

In Afghanistan, the guys find themselves quickly deflated.  They sit around for about two weeks, not doing much of anything.  Meanwhile, the war rages.  This is not what they came for, and they decide they want to leave.  They tell their fixer, and they are on their way back to Pakistan.

Ironically (or not), Ruhel, Asif, Shafiq and Monir only get into trouble when they try to get out of Afghanistan.  Caught up in the confusion that is the town of Kunduz as it falls to the allies, they are rounded up and loaded onto a truck.  Monir disappears at some point, never to be seen again.  (In the film’s postscript, we learn that after their ordeal was over, the other three were never able to find out what happened to their friend.)  The confusion is captured in such a way that even we don’t see what happened to Monir.  He is there one minute, gone the next, like the Earth just opened up and swallowed him.  They are taken to a detention center, and they are eventually taken to Camp X-Ray, Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where, as one Devil Dog tells them, they are now property of the U.S. Marine Corps.  They are interrogated by Marines, British MI-5 agents, and other mysterious, nefarious characters.

After about three months at X-Ray, they are moved to the new, “purpose built” facility, Camp Delta, where they remain for about a year, subject to the same conditions: interrogation, isolation, stress positions, all the rest.  A woman who identifies herself only as being from Washington plays a video for them, a rally held by Osama bin Laden.  She tells them she can see them in the video.  She does the same thing with a photograph of 9/11 leader Mohammed Atta.  The people she claims to be seeing are either clearly not the men in front of her, or they are impossible to identify, not that it makes any difference.  Nevermind that they can’t see it, or the fact that they were in England at the time, this woman is claiming they were at this rally, she sees it, which is really all that matters.

The Road to Guantánamo starts out looking like a lot of fun and quickly devolves into a nightmare.  The film has been called Kafka-esque, which is not entirely inaccurate (watching this, I kept thinking of The Trial), but the film plays like a horror movie.  Four friends go off on what is supposed to be a great vacation, where one of them is to be married, and they don’t all come home.  Along the way, they endure every kind of hell.  Think of how many horror films can be summed up that way, and now imagine they’re all real.

The film has a happy-ish ending, but it comes at the end of a long painful road.  The relief is simply that they are released, they are free to pick up the pieces of their lives, two years later.  The nightmare is over for them, but it continues for so many others.

Video

The Road to Guantánamo is presented in an anamorphic 1.78:1 widescreen ratio.  The transfer is sharp enough.  This movie looks like it was shot on video of some kind, and there is no getting around that, but the gritty, natural look of the film works, and the picture is well translated.

Audio

This DVD is presented in 5.1 Dolby Digital sound.  Again, the presentation fits the rest of the film, a natural, ambient heavy soundtrack that feels like it was picked up on the fly.  The channels are clear, and everything from the dialogue to the distant boom of falling bombs is presented with great clarity.

Special Features

Nothing.

Final Thoughts

The Road to Guantánamo is a compelling film, well acted and authentic enough that it is hard to tell where the performances stop and the real story begins.  The film is worth watching, but as a disc there is much to be desired.  The audio-visual elements are good, but the absence of bonus material is disappointing.  A commentary would have been great.