The catastrophe that ravaged New York September 11th, 2001 and the crimes committed against humanity managed to not only to breed an unjust war, but it also managed to breed a whole new era of ignorance and hatred, and in the process gave the truly ignorant and hateful a reason to discriminate, especially against Israelis, Afghans, and anyone who lived in this country who slightly resembled or bore the skin color of the terrorists in the name of being "patriotic". This is the story of the true crimes against humanity, the resentment towards people of color who had to suffer being lumped in with our attackers. Nominated for the grand jury prize at Sundance in 2004, this documentary chronicles interviews of twelve people, all of whom were legal immigrants and American citizens who were unjustly labeled as persons of interest either high, moderate, low, or unknown.

I'd have labeled them unknown because there's not one interview in this movie that would make you think "Oh well I can see why they'd think they were a terrorist", all of whom were very unjustifiably put through arduous procedures to get something out of them, all the while the directors intermesh the interviews of dip shit John Ashcroft advocating these
McCarthy-esque arrests which so horribly echoed the Salem witch trials. Yes, I bear a liberal attitude and I believe in the amendments of the constitution, and watching something like this presented to these poor people is disgraceful, and all of it is so symbolic of this countries sentiment that that ends justify the means in the name of liberty. But must we strip these people of their hopes, dreams, and security just because paranoia is running rampant?

A good portion of these people came to this country with hopes and dreams and had them crushed by the brutal methods they were given and were treated like criminals. Many of them were sadly deported, and the stories can sometimes be very sad. One man was arrested for just being Israeli, another was setup as a car thief and interrogated as a terrorist by FBI agents for no reason at all, and was denied his civil rights, and was jailed for a month in solitary confinement nearly dying. All of it is a heartbreaking portrait of poor people who were wrongly accused and beaten down by paranoia, hate, and hysteria by a nation who betrayed them. The persons of interest operation was just a witch hunt that managed to spawn the seeds of ignorance within Americans who just found another excuse to hate people of different color skin.

The authorities looked for any excuse to jail anyone with the skin color of the terrorists and jailed then wrongly , and they attacked legal immigrants, and no one seemed to care about this basic robbing of their rights, because it was all in the name of justice. It's sad to watch these people because most of them are speechless and afraid to speak their minds in fear of being attacked again. This is a sad documentary about the cost of stripping ones civil rights and is especially relevant in this year where so many people's rights are being stripped in the name of protecting the country. The nazi's were put on trial decades later after the holocaust for crimes against humanity. So when will the people enforced this project be put on trial? They're truly the criminals.

One of the main things that really kept this movie from becoming truly excellent was the directing and the lack thereof. The interviewers and directors are terrible and often times ask dumb questions and have no real skill in interviewing these people. Most of the time they stutter relentlessly, don't seem to know much about what they're going to ask the victims, and never seem to have control over their environment or their subjects. Had the documentary been more professionally done and kept the audiences attentions more, then this could have been one of the most powerful documentaries in years, but its so mired in amateurish direction it keeps the subject matter from becoming truly interesting. And would subtitles have hurt the production any?

A good portion of the interviewees accents were very hard to understand, and I just couldn't make out what they were saying, so I lost interest. Then halfway through the film, the directors try to be too artistic for their own good. I didn't like the wide shots, and moving the interviewers back and forth for dramatic effect was just a cheap device I didn't buy for a second. And what was the point of many of the sequences during this? A lot of it made no utter sense. There was really no point in showing the talking between the footage and interviews, the editing is so choppy and sloppy, and there were really long intermission where we watch the interviewee families playing around. What was the point of these scenes? Was it meant to jerk a tear or show how normal they are? Many scenes were just so shoddy, it was just painful.

There's no skill, no method, no approach, and no innovation, and most of the time this is very badly directed, which is what mainly bogged this down into mediocrity and the subject matter suffers. But this is a very politically relevant and many times heartbreaking fascinating documentary on political corruption.

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