It’s probably good that this movie exists, but that doesn’t mean you’ll want to see it.
“Standard Operating Procedure” may only be for you if either No. 1: You have a direct personal or professional interest in the infamous Abu Ghraib scandal and the gruesome minutia behind it; or No. 2: You have some kind of weirdo fetish that might predispose you to want to expose yourself to even more graphic variations on the sick images that were pervasive when the affair broke.
Who can forget the Muslim men stripped of their clothes, forced into a human pyramid? Or what about a tomboyish private named Lynndie England, grinning brightly and pointing at a naked prisoner to become the notorious face of — and unfortunate scapegoat for — the brouhaha?
Those indelible pictures turn out to be just samples from a huge gallery that also includes shots of the mutilated corpse of an Iraqi man, the byproduct of a torture session gone wrong.
Preserving them for the big screen is director-producer Errol Morris, who has earned numerous accolades for classic modern documentaries from 1988’s “The Thin Blue Line” to 2003’s “Fog of War.”
It should probably be considered a public service that the filmmaker was willing to immerse himself in this ugly episode, thereby creating a lasting — if excruciatingly protracted and sometimes redundant — compendium of key eyewitness testimony (including Ms. England’s), photographic evidence and dramatic re-enactments. As a useful tool for historians and psychologists in the future, it could be the basis for a chapter on corruption surrounding the Iraq war or a consummate human behavior study on power, primal instincts and peer pressure.
But it’s not clear what, if anything, another delve into the shocking details of this callous barbarism adds to a subject which has already been dissected in other documentaries and the news media. It’s a subject on which most savvy citizens probably already agree.
Morris comes to a foregone conclusion. Obviously, the idea to use systematic humiliation, “softening,” or torture tactics at places like Abu Ghraib comes from somewhere higher in the chain of command than with young military police grunts, who were the only folks to be prosecuted in this case. Some top brass and/or administration officials must have had culpability too.
What constituted “Standard Operating Procedure” at Abu Ghraib remains an outrage, even though we already knew it.
‘Standard Operating Procedure’
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