Just so...so bad

Dreadfully Boring

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Now, it's hard to limit myself with concise reasons why this film is, how shall we say? Bad? But suffice to say, they revolve around a fundamental bias against what I must assume is Islam. To begin with, I want to address the nomenclature. Jihad, itself, has nothing to do with war. Its meaning is much more broad, any struggle for the sake of faith. But, the real propaganda is what should be addressed. The first instance of propaganda is the music. While discussions of Christianity in the subject's past are merited with a happy gospel soundtrack, his Islamic life is met with sinister music. Simple technique to set 'good' and 'bad.' Arguably the most infuriating incidents are the whitewashing of the Lebanese Civil War (which is told from a very American perspective the hides the realities), and the comments of a man and woman who state that these struggles are not about God, and that they are merely done by men insecure in themselves thanks to being victimized in the past, and now trying to prove they are 'real men.'As a childhood victim of domestic violence, I know they are both wrong and insulting. I promised I would stand up for those who couldn't stand, and make sure no one suffered the way I did. It has nothing to do with what they say.But the worst is the ending. The subject's son is coaxed into saying typical little boy things, like wanting to shoot the bad guys, and then they do a long fade and bring in the adhan (call to prayers).Propaganda worthy of Goebbels.

This was an interesting story to watch and as an autobiographical piece on the man who was the subject I will say interesting, but it fails as a documentary on the subject of Jihad and comes off a bit superficial.I won't get into the story. It was definitely interesting but there were too many questions, for a 2010 documentary, that were ignored and completely unanswered.First and foremost the battles and wars this man participated in were all pre 9/11, but it seems to me the proper question to be asked of this man would have been his feelings on suicide bombers, attacks on the U.S. and the west, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. None of that was even brought up. The only part they even touched was that he was supposedly fighting for a faction in Lebanon that opposed kidnappings and may have been part of rescuing an American journalist. It is no secret in the story that he has a clear disdain for the U.S. but maybe the filmmakers were too afraid to ask the above questions.There were other odd things as well. They mentioned that he showed up in both Lebanon and Bosnia with his own weapons...? They didn't even ask at all how he was able to smuggle both hand guns and automatic weapons through international security. So if I were forced to give this film a school type grade I would say "I" for incomplete. Some of the facts seemed to be checked. Others seemed to be taken on faith. Overall it lacked the critical questioning that a good fact based interview should. There seemed to be an overall lack of questioning a man who by all accounts led an interesting life but also deserved to be probed a bit.