Review of Standard Operating Procedure (2008) by Eric B — 03 Nov 2008

By now, we've all seen the now-infamous Abu Ghraib photos---the female soldier pointing jaunty finger guns at the hooded, masturbating prisoner; the detainee on a leash; the pyramid of naked men. Most of us responded with the appropriate moral disgust, and eventually moved on. But Errol Morris isn't most of us. In his latest excellent documentary, "Standard Operating Procedure" legendary filmmaker Morris does what few have bothered to: he interviews many of the now-scapegoated "bad apples" who shot and posed in the Abu Ghraib photos, and thoughtfully, impartially attempts to root out the backstory behind the pictures that made Bush (as one talking head puts it) "apologize to the world." In doing so, Morris ("The Fog of War") uncovers truths both unsurprising (that the use of torture to "soften up" prisoners before interrogation at Abu Ghraib was army-sanctioned; that no military higher-ups were ever charged in connection with the photo scandal) and VERY surprising (that Sabrina Harman, one of the convicted scapegoats, took her Abu Ghraib photos not to demean prisoners, but to document Army-sanctioned abuse that she thought no one would believe existed). The result: a thorough, balanced film that's not afraid to show the humanity in the finger-gun-popping thumbs-up-giving soldiers we long ago wrote off as inhuman.

By me, The Coast.