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Herald rating: 4 out of 5
The prolific, versatile and passionate British director Michael Winterbottom comes up with a film much more surreal than his hilarious Tristram Shandy with this real-life story about three young innocents crushed by the war on terror.
He extends the boundaries he pegged out with the remarkable In This World about the people-smuggling of refugees, making a verite drama that is distinguishable from documentary only because the footage of the real young men and the actors playing them is interleaved.
The 9/11 confessions of Khalid Sheikh Muhammad this month give topicality to the story of the so-called Tipton Three - Ruhel Ahmed, Asif Iqbal and Shafiq Rasul - held without charge for almost three years in the US military camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba before being released in March 2004.
Just this week, two more long-term British residents picked up in the same sweeps as the men whose story is told in this film were cleared for release by the Pentagon, but remain in custody because the British Government won't take them back. Such travesties are highlighted by the film's inclusion of a news clip with George Bush saying: "The only thing I know for certain is that these are some bad people."
To be fair, Winterbottom's film takes at face value the story of what started out as four young men: in Karachi for the wedding of one of them, they decide to follow an imam's call to visit war-torn Afghanistan and offer humanitarian aid. When they find themselves in the middle of a town under US bombardment one of them, Monir Ali, disappears, and the other three are swept up in the tide of fleeing Taleban and are captured.
The details of their detention may be imagined. Winterbottom's unabashedly partisan approach means that British and US troops are depicted as swaggering, paranoid oafs, a level of caricature that may not have been necessary given how bleakly laughable their real-life equivalents are. This is a film more outraged than dispassionate. But given the material it traverses, that is no bad thing.
Cast: Rizwan Ahmed, Farhad Harun, Waqar Siddiqui, Afran Usman
Directors: Michael Winterbottom, Mat Whitecross
Running time: 95 mins
Rating: R13, contains violence, offensive language and content that may disturb
Screening: Rialto Newmarket
Verdict: Passionate, partisan and compelling dramatisation of the true story of three young Brits held without trial by US forces
