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'The Road to Guantanamo' takes some interesting turns

"The Road to Guantanamo" is the incredibly true (maybe ...) story of three lads from Tipton, England, who went to Pakistan for a wedding and ended up imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay for two years.

Barely a month after 9/11, four British Muslims — Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal and Ruhel Ahmed — traveled to Pakistan to watch Asif get hitched. Once there, they made a series of naive (at best) decisions, the first being to heed an Iman's call to go to Afghanistan to help their under-siege neighbors.

Roadside Attractions 'The Road to Guantanamo' B- The verdict: A rough road for three British Muslims makes for an interesting documentary. Directors: Michael Winterbottom, Mat Whitecross Cast: Rizwan Ahmed, Ruhel Ahmed, Asif Iqbal, Shafiq Rasul, Farhad Harun Run time: 95 minutes Release date: June 23, 2006 Rating: R for language and disturbing violent content. On the web Official movie site View the trailer    Trailers require Quicktime Rate 'The Road to Guantanamo'   Go see it   Make it a matinee   Wait to rent   Don't bother Voter Limit: Once per Hour View Poll Results

Things quickly got messed up. First they got separated from a fourth traveling companion and never saw him again. Next, they boarded a variety of vans, trucks and buses, without really knowing where they were going or with whom. Finally they landed in a convoy of surrendering Taliban members.

From then on, all bets were off for the Tipton Three (as they became known). Passed from one prison to the next, they were eventually shipped off to Gitmo where they were treated as suspected terrorists.

In the end, they were released without ever being charged.

Michael Winterbottom and co-director Mat Whitecross combine newsreel footage and interviews with the real Tipton Three with re-enactments featuring Riz Ahmed as Shafiq, Farhad Harun as Ruhel and Arfan Usman as Asif. It's an interesting choice and it adds some dimension to what could've come off as a one-sided, anti-American protest film. "The Road to Guantanamo" is one-sided and, in part, anti-American, but via the fictionalized sequences, the directors convey more angles of the story.

On the one hand, the trio really do come off as innocents abroad, putting themselves in dangerous situations without realizing the consequences. On the other, these 20-somethings are often downright dumb. Instead of taking advantage of interrogation sessions to explain themselves, they behave sullenly or mouth off at the interviewer. In fact, they're repeatedly shown as such, well, dopes you have to wonder if it's intentional on the part of the directors — a way of pointing out, hey, kids, this isn't how to get yourself out of trouble if you're as innocent as you say you are.

Actually, "Road" makes no effort to determine the Tipton Three's innocence or guilt or even to verify that things happened as they say they did. Instead, the film mixes the personal with the political, showing us three foolish young men who, in a different setting, might be sent to the principal's office for skipping class. The movie isn't likely to change minds on either side of the incident (or the Iraq War or conditions at Gitmo). Still, in its way, it's a fascinating story — almost on a par with the feckless Three Little Pigs.