I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority, still more when you super-add the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it." This is so true and applicable to the Bush,Jr. administration, from the top down. We have a cowardice for Commander in Chief, so are his cabinets and his generals. They should stand trial in the Hague for their war crimes. If what was said about General Sanchez (by Brigadier General Karpinski) in the documentary is true, then he is a bully and a coward.

We're all familiar with the images that began flowing out of Abu Ghraib Prison in the spring of 2004 - photos showing detainees (some terrorists, others undoubtedly not) hooded and stripped, forced to assume painful and/or humiliating positions, often for hours on end, with American soldiers posing gleefully nearby, smiling and flashing thumbs-up signs for the camera. Once the pictures went viral, they came to symbolize not only the botched operation that was the Iraq war, but the fundamental failure of the U.S. military to win friends and influence people in a land the Bush administration claimed vehemently to be "liberating." In "Standard Operating Procedure," famed documentary filmmaker Errol Morris ("The Thin Blue Line") attempts to uncover the truth behind those photographs, mainly by allowing those who were most closely involved with the scandal to tell the story in their own words (including Private First Class Lynndie England, who, whether fairly or unfairly, emerged as the one clearly identifiable "face" and household name from the scandal). Morris provides no voice-over narration to accompany the interviews, just re-enactments of the incidents done in a quasi-surrealistic style, using slow motion photography and artsy graphics.Through his discussions with the principal players in the drama, Morris provides a probing study of the effects of war time stress on the human psyche. The film offers no easy answers as to exactly why the events at Abu Ghraib unfolded as they did; yet, while it doesn't turn the individuals involved into easy-to-blame villains, it doesn't completely exonerate them either. In fact, it is the seeming "normalcy" of these people, as they attempt to make their case for the camera, that renders their actions all the more unsettling. Morris also makes it clear that these low level individuals - many of whom have served time in prison for their crimes - were most certainly used as scapegoats for higher-ups in the military who managed to successfully deflect any personal culpability for the events that took place there.In a true journalistic coup, Morris was able to obtain grainy home movies shot at the same time that the pictures were being taken. As a result, we're able to witness the step-by-step process by which that infamous shot of the naked men stacked in a pyramid formation ultimately came about."Standard Operating Procedure" doesn't successfully address all the questions it sets out to answer, but that is hardly a weakness of the film, since it is dealing with a complex, messy situation involving complex, messy people caught up in a complex, messy war. One doesn't leave "Standard Operating Procedure" necessarily more enlightened that when one went in - just more well-informed. And that's perhaps the best one could reasonably hope for under the circumstances.

I recommend this film for viewing. The film maker was able to obtain direct interviews with some of the soldiers involved in this chapter of American history. I don't think it's unfair to say that it is an important record concerning the events at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq during the American occupation. As such, it should be viewed by anyone interested in this subject.I credit the film maker with allowing the soldiers involved to present some part of their story and also allowing one soldier to point out that only soldiers at lower levels would suffer prosecution.The film would be better if it addressed the White House's views on torture and the legal documents giving rise to the same. Also, the film should have presented more opinions from the legal community regarding accepted standards of care for prisoners, prisoners of war, enemy combatants and the like.Nonetheless, I found the film informative. I would not classify most documentaries as objective, and therefore, I don't mind the slanted view on the screen, but as far as film goes, the film maker did try to give the soldiers some opportunity to tell their story -- and their side of the story (that superiors were responsible for the policy) has some merit.I'm saddened that these events were committed by Americans. As one of the soldiers pointed out – others actions have occurred that are more troubling – but nobody took pictures.We as citizens of the US rely on our elected representatives to direct the foreign affairs of our country. Our Congress has oversight authority concerning these matters. Don't give up on the American system.I did chuckle at the score during the human pyramid scene – truly stuporous.

What a crashing bore of a movie on a topic that deserved a much better treatment. Morris displays his customary heavy handedness in driving home the trivial and obvious points with excess, unneeded imagery. If you want to see a compelling story on this issue, told with much more flare and skill, see Taxi to the Dark Side. Don't waste your time on this, unless you need a good snooze. On display are Morris's usual techniques, employed to similar head-scratching ends as in Fog of War. At least there, we had an interesting character at the heart of the story and Morris lucked out with some poignant on-screen moments from McNamara. Here, he demonstrates that he has no intellectual or critical filter with which to sift facts. So, when one interviewee mentions the three cameras used to take the pictures at Abu G, we get a special effects image of each camera model floating in space as if this were some revelatory moment. When it is revealed that during an amnesty period after the Abu G scandal was revealed many photos and other documents were handed in a shredded, we get, not just a slow mo of shredded paper falling through the air, we get also get an entire cell block filled with bits of paper. In other words, every moment is punctuated with Morris's subtext: you're just too dumb to get what you just heard and I'm so enthralled with my movie making skills that I'm going to beat you over the head with this. This is not documentary film-making. This is rampant narcissism.