The Road to Guantanamo
Roadside Attractions | Release Date: June 23, 2006 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
64
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 28 Critic Reviews
Positive:
17
Mixed:
11
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
San Francisco ChronicleRuthe Stein
A film that must be seen to understand the sad truths of our times. It's been made with a sensitivity and creativity that's come to exemplify Winterbottom's work. Read full review
88
TV Guide MagazineKen Fox
Questions the efficacy and, above all, the humanity of what even steadfast Bush supporters like Tony Blair have condemned. Read full review
88
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Stephen Cole
As provocative as it is timely. Read full review
80
Film ThreatPhil Hall
For telling America to acknowledge how far the country has deviated from its values and how painfully it has failed to make the world safer, this is the most important movie of the year. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterKirk Honeycutt
A tough, compelling, must-see movie. Read full review
80
TimeRichard Corliss
The Road to Guantánamo is his (Winterbottom’s) most unsparing statement yet of war's brutalizing effect on both the prisoner and his jailer. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubScott Tobias
They never come up with a sufficient reason for crossing into Afghanistan. Their motives for heading straight into a war zone sound like something out of a stoner comedy: They went in search of "really big naan." Read full review
75
New York Daily NewsJack Mathews
The movie, shot digitally, begins as a not very compelling or particularly convincing road movie, and turns into a riveting prison drama. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeWesley Morris
The film's insistence on the men's innocence is matter of fact. But it's also an urgent corrective to the suspicious eye the movies so often cast on Arabs and Islam. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael Wilmington
It's a fervent, topical political drama of extraordinary impact and ferocity. Read full review
75
Seattle Post-IntelligencerPaula Nechak
A harrowing, frustrating view of paranoia and ineptitude that may seem a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time but evolves more into a mystery. Read full review
70
New York Magazine (Vulture)David Edelstein
The filmmakers have done their job brilliantly: The Road to Guantánamo is yet more lousy PR for the infidels. Read full review
70
VarietyDeborah Young
The film has a winning combo of excitement and topicality. Read full review
70
Village VoiceJ. Hoberman
One of the most oppressive accounts of life in a military detention since Jonas Mekas's "documentary" version of The Brig or Peter Watkins's Punishment Park. Read full review
63
USA TodayClaudia Puig
A riveting and disturbing documentary that falls short of greatness by not providing enough insight into the characters. It is mostly intent on inciting a sense of outrage in the viewer, and it succeeds. Read full review
63
New York PostLou Lumenick
The Road to Guantanamo is a missed opportunity. This is a subject that deserves a more thoughtful documentary or docudrama, not a hastily thrown together amalgam of the two. Read full review
63
Philadelphia InquirerCarrie Rickey
Since the film does not include the testimony of U.S. military or neutral human-rights observers, it gives viewers no way to test the subjects' reliability as narrators. Read full review
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