An innocent taxi driver walks into a U.S. military base and never comes out—what happens next is a story the government doesn’t want you to hear.
“Taxi to the Dark Side” from Alex Gibney (pulls back the curtain on a nightmare that asks, “Is this really the land of the free?”
I rank this #4 on my list of “Best Prison Documentaries”.
Trailer for “Taxi to the Dark Side”
Watch “Taxi to the Dark Side” Free on YouTube
Backup (also free on YouTube)
You can also watch”Taxi to the Dark Side” for free on YouTube here:
You can find the latest streaming options at https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/taxi-to-the-dark-side (this link included free options (with no ads) to watch it on Kanopy and Hoopla (with library card/student ID) and free on Amazon Prime last I checked (November 3, 2024).
Ratings:
- My Rating: 95/100
- IMDB Rating: 7.5/10
- Rotten Tomatoes Ratings: 90/100 (Users); 100/100 (Critics)
Release Date: April 30, 2007
My Review of
“Taxi to the Dark Side” is a gut punch of a documentary that dives straight into the horrifying reality of U.S.-sanctioned torture.
Alex Gibney’s film isn’t about distant policies—it’s about pain, blood, and a government that turned a blind eye.
We start with Dilawar, a 22-year-old Afghan taxi driver who, in 2002, was taken to Bagram Air Base. Within five days, he was dead.
Had Dilawar somehow survived, his legs would have needed amputation.
You Can’t Make This Sh*t Up
Dilawar was one of 105 detainees who died in U.S. custody. Guards had beaten his knees so brutally that the coroner said his legs “looked like they’d been run over by a bus.” Had he lived, his knees would have been amputated.
At least 37 of the 105 deaths were officially classified as homicides.
A Cold, Calculated Brutality
Gibney (“Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room” and “Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief) goes after the facts like a bulldog, piecing together how torture became standard practice.
Turns out, the tactics weren’t random—they were rooted in a set of “interrogation techniques” developed in the 1950s.
Gibney traces it back to Dr. Donald Hebb, a psychologist at McGill University, who wanted to study sensory deprivation.
He tested it on college students who wore heavy goggles, earplugs, and gloves. Within 48 hours, they were hallucinating, and some had complete mental breakdowns.
The CIA took notes and ran with it, creating a manual that spelled out how to mentally break a human being.
These techniques—sensory overload, forced standing—were codified in the CIA’s Kubark Counterintelligence Interrogation Manual in 1963 and then exported worldwide.
By the time the “War on Terror” kicked off, these methods were being used at black sites and military prisons from Guantanamo to Iraq.
And the effects were staggering. Guantanamo detainees were outfitted with giant gloves, ear coverings, and masks—not for security, but to induce sensory disorientation.
For hours on end, prisoners were kept in stress positions, sometimes standing shackled to the ceiling. The idea was simple: destroy a person’s mind without leaving visible marks.
The Joke that Wasn’t Funny
Gibney zeroes in on a press conference with Donald Rumsfeld that perfectly captures the callousness of those in power.
Rumsfeld was asked about the policy of forcing detainees to stand for hours on end. His response? He joked it off, saying he was “in his 70s and stands all day long.”
But detainees at Guantanamo weren’t on some casual stroll—they were forced to stand in shackles for far longer than the “4 hours” Rumsfeld mentioned. For many, the pain was unbearable, but that was exactly the point.
Gibney gives us a glimpse into a bureaucratic machine that justified these abuses under the guise of protecting American lives.
Dehumanizing with a Purpose
The film drives home the chilling indifference of the officials who set this nightmare in motion.
The top brass downplayed it as “enhanced interrogation,” a watered-down term for torture. Soldiers on the ground were left to interpret directives, leading to horrific outcomes.
At Bagram, soldiers saw orders to “soften up” prisoners as free license to brutalize them. They beat Dilawar’s legs into pulp, convinced that his screams were just an act.
His body was so broken that he eventually died, alone in a cage, with guards casually watching from outside.
But Dilawar’s death was just one case.
Gibney shows how this system of dehumanization spread across military sites, where prisoners were stripped of any rights under the label of “enemy combatants.” They became disposable, faceless, nameless.
Some soldiers, like those Gibney interviews in the film, are haunted by the trauma they inflicted. One former guard speaks about how they were conditioned to view detainees as subhuman, as threats.
Following orders, he says, justifies everything—until it doesn’t.
Rooted in Research, Steeped in Suffering
Through interviews with experts like historian Alfred McCoy, Gibney traces a chillingly direct line from Hebb’s original psychological experiments to the systematic torture used by the U.S. government.
This wasn’t rogue behavior; it was calculated, approved, and documented.
The Bush administration’s “torture memos” redefined what qualified as “severe pain” and carved out exceptions that allowed almost any practice short of outright murder.
This opened the door for guards at places like Abu Ghraib to use any means necessary to “extract information”—from hoods to extreme sleep deprivation.
Gibney leaves no stone unturned in laying bare the bureaucratic deceit that paved the way for a global culture of torture.
Wrap Up
“Taxi to the Dark Side” is a nindictment of the dark, twisted logic behind torture.
Gibney doesn’t flinch in exposing how easily a government can abandon morality in the name of security.
This isn’t easy viewing (I cringed a buncgh) and it shouldn’t be. Gibney forces us to see the brutal cost of the “War on Terror” on both sides.
Thanks for reading!
Rob Kelly, Chief Maniac, Daily Doc