This plodding documentary felt overlong with about the last 20 minutes spent in a village where the filmmakers may have been hoping (they don't quite say it directly) to obtain the journalistic coup of a post 9/11 on-camera interview with Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and/or Taliban leader Mullah Omar, but didn't get it and chose to end the film with the waiting game anyway. Osama and Omar may have made a crafty decision for their personal safety, because the rest of the film has interviews with primarily Chechen jihadists who have mostly, since those interviews, been assassinated by such means as car bombs or poisoned mail. Several times the narrator or a security official stresses the dangers of the filmmakers' journey but the only on-screen incident involves having one of their jeeps get stuck in a mud hole whereupon a group of Afghani locals pitch in to pull/push them out. The film seemed to promise a journey into a jihadist "Heart of Darkness"/"Apocalypse Now" but instead of a Colonel Kurtz/Marlon Brando at the end, there is only a dry weeping mullah who exhorts the filmmakers to forget all they've seen and heard, and just learn to love God. Given the build-up, it is not enough to merit the journey.
A few extra points can be given for the filmmakers' perseverance in what appears to be extremely bleak circumstances and landscapes, which gets this to a 6 out of 10, or a 3 out of 5, or a 2 out of 4, depending on how you like to scale.
* the summary comment is because I went to a 9am screening of this film.
A few extra points can be given for the filmmakers' perseverance in what appears to be extremely bleak circumstances and landscapes, which gets this to a 6 out of 10, or a 3 out of 5, or a 2 out of 4, depending on how you like to scale.
* the summary comment is because I went to a 9am screening of this film.