Imminent Threat (2015)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Imminent Threat is a documentary film which premiered in the US in 2015.

 

The director focuses on some difficult questions which many Americans are asking themselves in the twenty-first century:

 

What is the proper balance between the National Security State and our civil liberties? Between the War on Terror and our personal freedom? Is there an imminent threat to our national security? Does this mean we have to give up some of our civil liberties?

 

Obviously, different people will offer different answers to these questions.

 

Here is some basic information about this film:

 

** Writer and director: Janek Ambros (born 1988)

** Executive producer: James Cromwell (born 1940)

** Available on DVD and via Amazon Prime Video

** Run time: ca 73 minutes

 

Several persons are interviewed in the film.

 

Here are the names of the participants (listed in alphabetical order):

 

** Ahilan Arulanantham - ACLU

** Peter Bibring – ACLU

** David Boaz (born 1953) – the Cato Institute

** Thomas Campbell (born 1952) – a former member of the US Congress (the Republican Party)

** Jodie Evans (born 1954) - founder of Code Pink

** Vlad Popescu – a US immigrant from Romania

** Jesse Walker (born 1970) – Reason Magazine

 

Archive footage is used between the talking heads. Archive footage is used to illustrate historical events and to show us old clips and old interviews with public figures.

 

What do reviewers say about this film?

 

Here are the results of two review aggregators:

 

** 63 percent = IMDb

** 67 percent = Rotten Tomatoes the audience)

** 80 percent = Rotten Tomatoes (the critics)

 

On Amazon there are at the moment 11 reviews of this product.

 

The average rating is 2.9 stars which corresponds to a rating of 58 percent.

 

As you can see, the ratings are mixed. While I like this film, I cannot go all the way to the top, because it has a serious flaw. What is wrong? The flaw concerns the way it is edited, more specifically cross-cutting.

 

Cross-cutting is a special technique in which clips from two different locations or sources are mixed with each other. It could also mean that the audio track from one source is used while video clips from another source are shown.

 

In this film, cross-cutting is used many times.

 

In my opinion, too many times.

 

The worst case is when we see President Bush joking about his search for Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Oval Office during an official dinner at the White House.

 

The audience laughs. It is a long laugh. While we hear the long laugh, we see clips of war and exploding bombs in Iraq.

 

This kind of editing is a case of poor taste.

 

This is too much.

 

Imminent Threat covers an important topic. It could have been a great film, but unfortunately it is not.

 

Why not?

 

What is wrong?

 

It has a flaw, which cannot be ignored. I have to remove one star because of this flaw. This is why I think this product deserves a rating of four stars (80 percent).

 

PS # 1. The following (rather critical) review of the film is available online: 

 

John DeFore, 

“ImminentThreat: Film Review,” 

The Hollywood Reporter, 

23 October 2015

 

PS # 2. This film is dedicated to the memory of the American reporter Michael Hastings (1980-2013), who wrote several stories about Iraq.

 

PS # 3. For more information about the topic, see the following items:

 

** Control Room (2004)

** Why We Fight (2005)

** The Ground Truth (2006)

** Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers (2006)

** No End in Sight (2007)

** The Unknown Known (2013)

** We Are Many (2014)

** A Good American (2015)

 

*****

Imminent Threat

A documentary film about

civil liberties and the National Security State

(2015)

 

*****