The Road To Guantanamo

The Road to Guantanamo is based on the true story of the Tipton Three, a group of friends who travelled from Tipton in September 2001 in order to take part in a wedding in Pakistan. The film presents an epic two and a half year journey of misunderstandings, fear, ignorance, violence, and close friendship, which took them through the ‘heart of darkness’ of the ‘War on Terror’ before being released without charge after investigators failed to produce any evidence against them.

The film is innovatively directed by Michael Winterbottom who won the Silver Bear for Direction at the 56th Berlin Film Festival in February, and uses a variety of film styles including interviews with the three men, blended with re-enacted footage to tell this harrowing story of their flight from the fighting and ending up in with Taliban fighters hiding from the fire of US Fighter planes. They are then captured by coalition forces in Afghanistan who march and roughly transport the friends to Sherbeghan Prison. Following the recognition by their captors that the group are English they are then handed over to the American forces and shipped out to Cuba where their torment continues with their subsequent treatment at the prison camp in Guantánamo, and they are held without trial for over two years.

Punctuating the film are moments of poignant brilliance; such as the inclusion of press footage showing Donald Rumsfeld’s economies with the truth as he attempts to brush off attacks regarding the Guantánamo controversies by stating that the internment camp "for the most part" meets the standards set by the Geneva Convention, and the redefining of the word "torture" to justify the brutal US activities towards prisoners following media allegations.

This is a thought provoking presentation with some extremely uncomfortable scenes, which shies away from portraying the three main protagonists as martyrs, instead showing them as a normal but flawed group of idealistic friends who become embroiled in a nightmare world which is worthy of Franz Kafka’s distorted and surreal fantasies of false trials, interrogations and impending danger which haunt the innocent.

Commenting on the sensitivity with which the subject material has handled, online movie guide Moviemail said, "Although Winterbottom is clearly disgusted by Guantanamo, this is no sensational diatribe." ( http://www.moviemail-online.co.uk/films/17458#reviews ). While nagging thoughts may remain that parts of the story have been glossed over in favour of dramatic licence, the relative sobriety of Michael Winterbottom’s direction along with the quality of the editing and beautiful cinematography make for an engaging and sobering view of the conflict from a view which makes the full twisted immoral reality of the "War on Terror" all the more real.