The Report: Uncovering the secrets of the CIA's detention and interrogation program (Film Review)

Media Screening
On Assignment: Sydney Scoop – Editor: Rebecca Varidel
Thriller (USA)
Duration: 128 minutes
In Cinemas Thursday 14 November

Most of us are unlikely to ever read the Senate’s 525 page summary report into the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program. “The Report” is a powerful dramatisation of events as they unfolded, with a decade of content condensed into 120 minutes of intense viewing.

Written and directed by Scott Z. Burns (Contagion, The Bourne Ultimatum), and starring a cast led by Adam Driver, Annette Bening, and Jon Hamm. The Report is a dramatic, hard-hitting portrayal of one man’s dogged pursuit to uncover the truth, and to expose the heinous practices of the CIA that were unleashed following 9/11.

In spite of the heavy material and confronting subject matter, the speed and intensity of the storytelling will have you on the edge of your seat, as the horrific details of CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program are revealed.

Daniel Jones is the Senate’s lead investigator, and is the central figure in this gripping tale of corruption and cover up. The story unfolds over a decade-plus long period, culminating in the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s 525 page summary report (the full report is 6,700 pages), and the enactment of the McCain-Feinstein Anti-Torture Amendment.

It is almost farcical that two psychologists could compel the CIA to spend $80 million of US taxpayers’ money to undertake systematic torture of suspected terrorist detainees, euphemistically referred to as “enhanced interrogation techniques”. There’s a scene in the movie where these methods – walling, attention grasps, slapping, facial hold, stress positions, cramped confinement, white noise and sleep deprivation – is presented to the CIA as the new frontier in eliciting unique intelligence.

Even more shocking is the re-enactment of the interrogations. And then the sobering truth of the subsequent CIA subterfuge to prevent the truth from coming out. It’s serious, must-see viewing with lessons for us all.