We saw Control Room last night, overall I was underwhelmed. If you read the better blogs, you won’t learn much from this film.
I did feel that the movie presented the so-called “American point of view” with relative fairness. The American communications officer spoke frequently, was portrayed sympathetically, and made many of the better points in defense of the war. That being said, I had the following complaints:
1. There was no talk of the links between Al Jazeera and the government of Qatar. Al Jazeera journalists are presented as independent mavericks, beholden to no one.
2. There was very little shown on the crimes of Saddam. It is discussed that the Iraqi people are glad he is gone. But there is nothing on torture, the war with Iran, his use of WMD, or mass graves, for instance.
3. If anything, the movie made CNN and other Western media look less constrained by the U.S. military than they in fact are.
But most of all, the movie bored me. The best parts are the bits from Rumsfeld, but I won’t offer spoilers on that.
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