Big Picture Big Sound

Below his normal standards

Errol Morris is one of our finest living directors. Because he works almost entirely in the documentary form, he flies under the radar from the general public. He has helped elevate documentaries by adding artistic touches and production values. While most docs are straight fact-telling, Morris weaves tales like all great storytellers. He has previously brought us "Fog of War", "The Thin Blue Line", and so many other great films. "Standard Operating Procedure" isn't one of his best but it is a pretty fair outing nevertheless.

The story concerns the infamous Abu Ghraib incident. I wasn't sure what Morris would be presenting here but whatever it was I knew it would be professionally done and I was not disappointed with that part of it. Morris interviews most of the major participants that became known to us through the digital pictures that were broadcast on our television sets and on the Internet, including the poster child, Lynddie England, who we saw holding dog leashes around prisoner's necks, pointing at their genitals and laughing and so on. During that time, I thought of her as slime and while she is no sweetheart by any definition, it is clear that she, and some of the other enlisted men and women, were sacrificed by the higher-ups in order to protect themselves.

Through interviews with Ms. England and the others, the picture becomes at least a little bit clearer but never in totality. One of the lead interrogators bemoans the fact that we put a bunch of know-nothing kids in a position where they had no chance but to fail. They were not trained in interrogation. They were not trained in much of anything. Yet, they routinely questioned prisoners, assuming that information could be extracted from them. We now know that at least some of the prisoners had nothing to do with terrorism. They were not pure innocents. Some were rapists and committers of other "normal" criminal acts. Trying to garner wartime data from them was like digging a hole in your backyard and expecting to strike oil.

"Standard Operating Procedure" takes way too much time to get rolling and at 118 minutes, could use extensive trimming. The look and aesthetics are far better than the content. In retrospect, I'm not sure I have ever had that opinion of a documentary. It's still worth a look but if you want to explore Mr. Morris' finer work, rent one of his other films.