Wonderful character development!

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

It's March 2003. Al Jazeera is riding a new wave of Arab satellite TV with 40 million viewers. This documentary follows the channel as they cover the second Iraq War up to the Americans arriving in Baghdad after one of their reporters is killed by an American bomb.This has many of the behind-the-scenes stuff expected from this type of movies. Not all of it is that compelling or that surprising. There is obvious bias from all sides. Again that's not surprising and gets tiring after awhile. It is slightly humorous to see the Arab journalists almost dismissing the idea of objectivity and desperately trying to explain away the media stories coming out of Centcom. In the end, it shows the cultural divide and the impossible gap between them.

When a documentary seems like a movie, then it has succeeded in capturing the audience's attention. It induces the audience to listen to and ponder the story that it is telling and here it is a compelling story, one that has to be told. By cutting through all the propaganda and blasting through all the spin the producers of this documentary provide a frank and comprehensive picture of how news coverage is distorted, depending on who controls the flow of information. And this is directly related to the the question of freedom of the press and how that freedom can be eroded if enough pressure is applied. This documentary also reveals several interesting facts relating to the Iraq War itself and the relationship between western and Arab news media, and their relationship with the U. S. military. Ultimately this documentary is about integrity and about why we must have a free and open press that will keep the public informed and shed light on the actions of the government.

It's pretty tough to review and rate a documentary like this. Mainly because it's taken almost solely from an Arab perspective: an Arab news media, living in a deeply Arab culture, and run by Arab men and women.That's not to say that what we see on NBC and Fox News here in the States is any less insightful. Skewed toward the Lazy-Boy recliner news watcher, the American news media is just as blind to its prejudices and half-truths as many other media outlets around the world.So when I read reviews of this documentary and they lambaste it for being "one-sided", I have to shrug and say, "Yeah, so what news media do you watch?" Covering the Iraq War, Al Jazeera focused on what happened and was happening from inside Bahgdad. A pretty risky proposition, a move that ends up killing one of their correspondents. Looking at the Ba'athists and other political affiliations within the country was interesting and, again, a bit skewed.The anti-American sentiment can be felt smoldering under the surface of Al-Jazeera, too. But whether this is simply a survival strategy (they do have to live there after the Americans are gone) or real is anyone's guess.This IS a great documentary to watch, though. Being spoon fed Fox News' version of the war is just as blinding as Al Jazeera's. But after watching CONTROL ROOM, I know now that somewhere between the American TV reports and Al Jazeera, the truth does lie.

In "Living Room Wars," author David D. Perlmutter, a senior fellow of the Reilly Center for Media and Public affairs, claims that the "pretense that we are better informed than ever in history about wars in distant lands is the big lie in the television age." We live in the most powerful country in the world with the most powerful military. However, we have no true understanding of what war really is because we have the benefit of not having to experience it. Our relationship to war is completely mediated by the major media corporations in the United States. What makes "Control Room" worth seeing is that it allows Americans to see another point of view in the Iraq War."Control Room" helps us to see the Iraq War from the perspective of the Al Jazeera Satellite Network, a controversial, popular Arab news network. The main point of the documentary is not to convince viewers that American intervention in Iraq is right or wrong, but instead to get people thinking about the role of the media in shaping our perception and understanding of the Iraq War and whether our opinion is justified based on correct evidence or not. It is no hidden secret that the media, if manipulated correctly, can be a powerful weapon in war. The beginning of the documentary opens with a candid shot of an Al Jazeera Network executive saying that war cannot be waged without the media and that the media should be on the top of the military agenda. Perlmutter also agrees that because of the prevalence of the television, "the military could no longer completely ignore or completely censor the press, yet they would wage war under the assumption that the battle to control the content and captioning of TV pictures was decisive as campaigns in the air, sea, and land." One of the most shocking examples of the power of the media in the documentary was when the US bombed the headquarters of Al Jazeera and another Iraqi television news networks which resulted in the death of one of an Al Jazeera reporter. After the Al Jazeera headquarters was bombed the reporters who worked for them were forced to leave wherever they were because the Iraqi people thought they were "targeted" by the US military and did not want to be put in danger by aiding an American enemy. Obviously, the US military viewed Al Jazeera as a threat or it wouldn't have bombed them in the middle of the city. A US military official said the US spends massive amounts of money to buy precision bombs so they don't make mistakes on what they're bombing. The day after the bombing took place, there were native villagers who gathered to celebrate the liberation of Baghdad. However, interviews with Al Jazeera correspondents suggest that the whole celebration was staged by the US military in order to spur American nationalism. Only the foreign press was there to cover the event because Al Jazeera was forced to leave. This is a powerful example showing how the management of the media can be used fight wars. The images that we tend to see on TV in America are, as Perlmutter says, "limited, homogeneous, and leave out much of the panorama of war." "Control Room" reinforces that idea. Seeing clips from Al Jazeera television stations left me feeling more informed about the war. In the American media, the most we see of war tend to be images of liberation or of tanks rolling across empty land. On Al Jazeera, American troops are seeing busting through people's doors, cussing, and threatening them with guns. That probably happens on a regular basis. War is brutal, but the American media censors those images out and accuses the networks who don't of showing enemy propaganda. However, this is not to say that Al Jazeera is without bias. Each channel caters to their own demographics nationalism. However, as an American, I find myself at a loss trying to understand how we can pride ourselves on spreading democracy and freedoms that come along with that (including freedom of speech), yet exercise such control not only over our own media but the media of the countries we are trying to spread that democracy to as well. The most refreshing (when I say refreshing, I don't necessarily mean pleasant) about "Control Room" is its subtly. "Control Room" engages audiences instead of repulsing them with an over the top opinionated documentary. Perlmutter says one of the dangers about the visual media is that the "words can say one thing, but the pictures could be almost anything." Part of the beauty of "Control Room" is that there is no narration and there are no fancy visual effects. The simple way the documentary was filmed made me feel as if I were right there watching all of the interviews take place. The interviews felt real instead of staged and rehearsed. The director leaves a lot of room for viewer interpretation and opinion. I didn't walk away from the film feeling like I had just been told what's right and what's wrong. Whether you are pro-war or anti-war, you can find something to appreciate in the film.