The tagline for Dirty Wars reads: “A secret army. A war without end. A journalist determined to uncover the truth.” And as the PR team synopsis leaps to point out, this documentary does indeed have some juicy subject matter. A classified, ominous part of the covert armed forces: The Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). A war without end. Kill lists. Assassinations. Hired African dictators. Night raids. Death threats. An undercover American journalist determined to get to the bottom of an ever more complicated path of lies and decent, playing out on a stage of grand, international proportions. Yes, my friends, this is a story of foreign lands, of combat boots hitting the dirt! It cannot but conjure up images of Humvees racing across the dusty roads, of men with sunglasses arguing via translators, of the whirling of Arabic folk music and the enchanting eyes of veiled beauties of the desert sands—etc.
Unfortunately Dirty Wars manages to capitalize not at all on this timeless subject matter. I don’t remember the last time a group of creatives was given this exciting of a topic to only issue this boring a documentary.
The flaw that most stays with the viewer is the relentless narration from journalist/star Jeremy Scahill. Scahill, that nemesis of American foreign policy, spends half the movie reading, it seems, from his book—in a monotone that could not be more disparate from the Scahill-of-Arabia roller coaster ride he keeps saying that these events have been for him.
I understand that Scahill is a talented writer, although I haven’t read his books. But I would recommend he stick to print and that interested viewers turn to any of the far more interesting American war documentaries to get their fix (No End in Sight is the best I’ve seen and has far more facetime with key players than it seems Scahill could get).
Still, Dirty Wars cannot totally escape its fascinating topic of American activities in the Middle East. There are troubling images of how we create our own enemies and how blood feuds start. Particularly troubling is a military that can act with impunity and without democratic oversight—in countries that we are not even close to being at war with.
These topics are troubling and force us to question the troubling complacency the American public has about wars that have lasted for 13 years and show little sign of ending.
Anyone who tries to do explore these issues is heading in the right direction—but this documentary is lazy and partisan. There are better ways to spend your time.
*Dirty Wars was nominated for a Best Documentary Oscar.
