Matrixiole Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

Ginger Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Jenni Devyn Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

Scarlet The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

MlKE It is a fine documentary but, as a tax payer and a thinking member of society (American or otherwise), it makes you angry – that was probably the filmmakers' intention (I hope). It boils down to a very simple human - if not more so - social thing. Responsibility. I'll sound like one of those Al Qaeda propaganda videos but I don't really care – as "western" societies, we should tread very carefully when it comes to interfering with "other people's business". Having powerful armies does not buy us the monopoly on being right.But let's get back to the responsibility thing. Sending thousands of "PlayStation Generation" children (especially the American ones, educated to a level of an infant, over privileged, immature, shallow, religious and totally convinced of their superiority, too boot), trigger happy and loaded with testosterone morons to a "far away land" for the purpose of pacifying it is irresponsible! Those people need moms and dads, not automatic weapons and armoured infantry fighting vehicles!!! And just so we're clear, dear "far right" friends - to me, it is personally insulting when "you" or the media call those people "heroes"! I think, Nazi Germany did it once – let's not copy them too much, shall we? I realize that there are many good servicemen and servicewomen who have something more in their heads than, pardon me, spunk, but they are outnumbered by idiots. Sorry. Intelligent, well educated, responsible, sensitive, critically thinking and open minded individuals don't make it to the army! Period. They just don't. Few do but that's as rare as a hooker with a doctorate.So who are those "heroes" if all the reasonable and responsible folks are sitting in their homes and watching "the other" part of society - the iron fist of democracy - represent them on CNN? Well, answer that question yourselves...The Abu Ghraib incident, I'm sure, is not an isolated one. Common rather, I'd say. No wonder the whole planet despises the United States and Great Britain. I understand that hatred. I am privileged though...to be on the other side of the argument and not worry about some cluster bomb blasting my asss to smithereens even though I don't even comprehend the reasons for the bombs falling. Feels good, doesn't it? To be save knowing that your side is the one delivering the blows and not receiving them. I'm sure that Wehrmacht and the SS personnel would tell you, with at most conviction, they were fighting the good war and for all the right reasons.That is the "responsibility" I'm talking about. Social, moral and human responsibility for one's actions. From the Government down to the least important private in the service. But that's the kind of thinking we're not ready for yet. Too forward. Army responsible for their actions, ha ha! See, if the military is a profession, why don't they have unions? It is because they are slaves! Obeying orders is a domain of slaves...or animals. That's what I could never understand – how can you possibly, as a sovereign individual, act simply because "someone" tells you to? And that "someone" is not at all obliged to explain themselves to you or explain the reasons for using you to carry out their wishes. Someone defined war once by saying "War is old people talking and young people dying". A truly profound quote.I think, ultimately, the power and responsibility for wars and what happens within their chaos lies with the man/woman holding the rifle. Let's leave it at that...

Robert J. Maxwell Errol Morris's documentary isn't still another Bush-bashing fiesta. Like the photos of the Abu Ghraib prisoners being abused, the pictures that form its central subject, the scope of the film is limited to an examination of how the pictures came to be, who participated in the acts, and who held the cameras. It's not even political in nature, so much as psychological and, more generally, philosophical.Susan Sonntag, author of the influential essay "On Photography", would have had a field day as a talking head, though I'm not sure she could have done better in presenting us with an interpretation of the pics than some of the more level-headed interviewees do. One of them blames the photos for the entire scandal. If the photos had never been taken, they could never have been disclosed, and the whole thing would never have happened. "It would just crawl under a rock." Another authority I'd like to call to the witness stand would be Anna Freud, Siggy's daughter, who was a famous psychologist in her own right. Anna laid out a list of "ego defense mechanisms" -- ways of thinking that protect us from feeling guilt or remorse for things we've done. The same MP who blames the photos claims that he lost it because a female MP had been hit in the face with a brick during a prison riot. That's why he had inmates spread-eagled on the floor and stomped their fingers with his boots.Most of these low-tier enlisted people, some of whom spent three years in jail, like Lynndie Englund, the face we've all come to know, or like another MP, were sentenced to ten years, have a simpler explanation. The explanation is phrased in different ways but when the broth is reduced it comes down to, "I was just following orders." I'm not sure how Anna Freud would classify that.One prisoner was to be subject to a medieval torture technique called the strappado, hoisted by his handcuffed wrists off the floor. The MPs lifted him from the floor and hoisted him. An interviewee observes that the jump suit bound his crotch to a point that would have caused an outcry, not to mention that the MPs were waiting for his shoulders to "pop" at any moment. Only then did they discover he was dead. One of the female MPs was charged with mistreatment of prisoners for taking a photo of the corpse. It's such a genuine tragedy that it's completely ridiculous.According to one of the guards, when the pictures were made public there was a thirty-day amnesty period, during which a frenzy of shredding and other forms of cover-up went on. Too bad. One wonders how high up the chain of command more evidence might have led investigators. Of course, wherever the permission originated it must have been implied. Nobody ever said, "Torture the prisoners and have a ball." But of course no one has to because of the effect of "command pressure." That's when you know what the boss wants done without his or her having to tell you explicitly. ("Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?") When General Ric Sancheze pokes his finger in your chest over and over and exclaims, "I want Saddam Hussein!", you don't have to have second sight to interpret his statement. And in Sanchez's book, he describes Secretary Rumsfeld's response to a report on enhanced interrogation techniques. One of the techniques is standing upright for three straight hours. Rumsfeld objected and asked why only three hours? He himself spends all day on his feet.One of the more interesting facts to emerge from this film. I suppose we've all seen the photo of the inmate standing on a wooden box. He's facing the camera. He's wearing a kind of poncho with a shredded hem, and there is a black hood over his head. His arms are outstretched and there seem to be metal wires attached to his fingers. The wires seemed to serve no purpose since they were attached to nothing. Here we learn that the prisoner had been told that he must stand on the box for hours on end, that the wires were electrodes, and that if he stepped down to the floor or fell off the box, he would be electrocuted. A casual glance at the photo wouldn't tell us that, and, of course, the prisoner himself was entirely wrong about the wires.For all that sensationalistic stuff, the film is a bit of a bore. Most of the interviewees, once we've heard them say a few things, are uninterestingly ordinary. None seems evil. Few show remorse. Reenactments are minimal, which is all to the good as far as I'm concerned. Unlike Morris's earlier documentaries on an animal cemetery or a Texas murder case, none of the speakers really holds the camera in thrall. It could have been half an hour shorter and been more effective.

Roland E. Zwick We're all familiar with the images that began flowing out of Abu Ghraib Prison in the spring of 2004 - photos showing detainees (some terrorists, others undoubtedly not) hooded and stripped, forced to assume painful and/or humiliating positions, often for hours on end, with American soldiers posing gleefully nearby, smiling and flashing thumbs-up signs for the camera. Once the pictures went viral, they came to symbolize not only the botched operation that was the Iraq war, but the fundamental failure of the U.S. military to win friends and influence people in a land the Bush administration claimed vehemently to be "liberating." In "Standard Operating Procedure," famed documentary filmmaker Errol Morris ("The Thin Blue Line") attempts to uncover the truth behind those photographs, mainly by allowing those who were most closely involved with the scandal to tell the story in their own words (including Private First Class Lynndie England, who, whether fairly or unfairly, emerged as the one clearly identifiable "face" and household name from the scandal). Morris provides no voice-over narration to accompany the interviews, just re-enactments of the incidents done in a quasi-surrealistic style, using slow motion photography and artsy graphics.Through his discussions with the principal players in the drama, Morris provides a probing study of the effects of war time stress on the human psyche. The film offers no easy answers as to exactly why the events at Abu Ghraib unfolded as they did; yet, while it doesn't turn the individuals involved into easy-to-blame villains, it doesn't completely exonerate them either. In fact, it is the seeming "normalcy" of these people, as they attempt to make their case for the camera, that renders their actions all the more unsettling. Morris also makes it clear that these low level individuals - many of whom have served time in prison for their crimes - were most certainly used as scapegoats for higher-ups in the military who managed to successfully deflect any personal culpability for the events that took place there.In a true journalistic coup, Morris was able to obtain grainy home movies shot at the same time that the pictures were being taken. As a result, we're able to witness the step-by-step process by which that infamous shot of the naked men stacked in a pyramid formation ultimately came about."Standard Operating Procedure" doesn't successfully address all the questions it sets out to answer, but that is hardly a weakness of the film, since it is dealing with a complex, messy situation involving complex, messy people caught up in a complex, messy war. One doesn't leave "Standard Operating Procedure" necessarily more enlightened that when one went in - just more well-informed. And that's perhaps the best one could reasonably hope for under the circumstances.

MacAindrais Standard Operating Procedure (2008) ***1/2 What's in a picture? They say its worth a thousand words, but how many words are what's not in a picture worth. How about thousands of pictures? That conundrum is one of the major foci of Errol Morris, the eccentric genius documentarian's new project, Standard Operating Procedure. Although I was not engaged as I was with Morris's other works, Standard Operating Procedure is still a brilliant and fascinating look at the Abu Ghraib photo scandal.Morris interviews through the interrotron numerous members of the staff at Abu Ghraib prison. They give their thoughts on their complicity in acts of torture, and reflect back on their experiences. One of the film's major attractions is Lynndie English, that now infamous young woman so maliciously captured on film.What comes across most intently is that they were just doing what they were told. Those orders always come from off camera left or right. No one above Staff Sergeant was ever charged with anything. This is a point the documentary tries to drive home. In any bureaucratic structure, the big dogs never take the fall. You always sacrifice your little men, your pawns. If people knew what was really going on at the top, they would most surely revolt, or at the very least make a stink, and that would be it for you.Morris interviews one person who claims she took pictures because she knew it was wrong, to show the world. Is she telling the truth? Well she also discusses how it was "kinda fun" sometimes. She is probably guilty and innocent on all counts.Morris delves into his subject matter with his usual detective style. He says very little, and of course never ever dares show his face on camera. He only prompts from time to time. He has a style that is uniquely his own in the documentary world. I did not find Standard Operating Procedure to be on the same level as say The Fog of War or Gates of Heaven. But then again how many are? This is a more than worthy addition to the Morris repertoire.