Customer Reviews

Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden?

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Morgan takes you places (the Middle East, N. Africa, Afghanistan) that most U.S. citizens would be afraid visit. He talks to common workers, college students, intellectuals, diplomats, U.S. soldiers, and the extremely wealthy. He gets invited to several of their homes. Just seeing how people live, what they think of us, what they want for their future, that would make a good film because these people will surprise you. It's also telling who rebuffs him, and it makes you shake your head both at his naive persistence and their attitudes. Morgan is very funny. He gets caught in some difficult, dangerous and absurd situations, and shows us something we didn't know about ourselves and others.

I don't usually like to watch a film twice, but I would see this one again in a heartbeat.

Oh Morgan Spurlock, what a great film maker. This movie was pretty good, in that it could have only used a bit more of the title in the film itself. While it did turn into more of a 'understanding of radical islam,' it still was very interesting. I think my favorite part is where he talks to a mosque preacher in Saudi who was railing against christianity and the USA; some very interesting thoughts there...Well, I definitley recommend this film to anyone who wants an educational and entertaining view of the middle east.

Morgan Spurlock takes a wild ride through several Middle Eastern countries in a somewhat comedic attempt to find OBL, encountering people with varying points of view on terrorism, OBL's whereabouts, American foreign policy, and other issues of interest. Despite the funny video game elements and the crazy questions, there is a (mostly) thoughtful and serious undertone to all of this.

The facts are these: OBL has not been found, Al Qaeda is still strong and probably growing, the war on terror is not working, and current policies are not effective. Sowing more discord throughout an already troubled region is not going to help any of us now or in the long run.


This is not as strong as some of Spurlock's previous work, but it is worth a look for its relevant subject matter.

I thought this documentary was pretty good as I like this kinda stuff anyway. The thing that I found most interesting was the fact that almost all the Muslim people and Palestinians and Egyptians were very friendly towards Spurlock (some even inviting him to eat with them) while when trying to talk to the Jews, they were very beligerent and even acting on the brink of violence towards him. I am not an anti-Semite, it just makes me rethink my opinions on who are the actual instigators in the long running conflict between Isreal and Palestine. So even though a lot of Middle Easterners stated that they hate America, their hatred is towards the American government (Good riddance, Bush!!) and not towards the American people. At least Obama is trying to act more civilized torward them. The moral of the story seems to be "Don't judge a whole race or religion by the actions of a handful of kooks!"

Watching Morgan Spurlock examine a topic like terrorism with the same light-hearted and cheesy humor he used in "Super Size Me" was at times entertaining, and other times cringe-inducing. While it ends way too tidily, the conversations between himself and many of those from supposed terrorist countries are a great way of returning some humanity to the image of people repeatedly pegged with negative stereotypes in the US. Perhaps the best part about the film is the perspective Spurlock has given that his wife is pregnant back in the US while he travels around, giving him a soon-to-be-parent's concern for the people he is meeting -- particularly the children.

Those meetings are great, and comprises the majority of the film. On the other hand, he chuckles while firing rocket launchers and guns with soldiers, and his mission to find Osama bin Laden is obviously doomed right from the beginning. Generally, it's a film packed with great interviews and footage that never quite forms a satisfying whole. But despite its flaws, this is the first film I've seen that gives average Americans the chance to view the War on Terror through the eyes of average citizens of the countries it is waged upon.

Forget about Carmen Sandiego. What we really want to know is where in the world is Osama bin Laden? That's what Morgan Spurlock, the documentarian who brought us "Super Size Me," is determined to find out - and he's gone and made a whole movie on the subject. He wonders why, all these years after 9/11, the man who perpetrated that atrocity has yet to be found and brought to justice - even with a $25 million reward hanging over his head. So if the CIA and the FBI can't locate him, perhaps Spurlock himself can. And with a baby of his own on the way, Spurlock has a new-found reason for wanting the world to be a peaceful place. So off he goes on a tongue-in-cheek - but, at the same time, deadly serious - tour through some of the most dangerous places on Earth in search of the Most Wanted Man in the universe.

So, after getting his inoculations, a little defense and survival training, some language lessons and tips on fashion, Spurlock is off and running on his journey.

He makes stops in Egypt, Morocco, Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and, finally, Pakistan (where most experts believe bin Laden is hiding out, if, indeed, he's alive at all) and, in each of those places, he discovers that people are just people, regardless of their religious and sectarian differences, and that the vast majority of them want pretty much the same thing: to earn a decent living, to provide for their families, and to see their children grow up in a world where people are free to live at peace with one another.

Not that he doesn't encounter individuals who express support for bin Laden and al Queda and sympathize with their causes - just that such people appear to be in the minority, even in that part of the world.

Spurlock is unsparing in his criticism of America for propping up dictators in these areas and for funding their brutal regimes, thereby providing a fertile breeding ground for present and future terrorists. But he also takes swipes at the radical Muslims themselves, who, through their extremist, blood-soaked actions, do all they can to give Islam a bad name. Perhaps, the most fascinating leg of the tour occurs in Saudi Arabia, where even Spurlock is shocked by what he sees: a country where church and state are truly one, where there is no freedom of speech or the press, and where religious moderates are as rare as a bin Laden sighting in a local strip joint. This leads to the most bizarrely incongruous and darkly amusing image in the film: that of an opulent, state-of-the-art mall swarming with women shoppers covered from head to toe in black burkas.

While Spurlock is dead serious in his intentions, his tone in "Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?" is refreshingly light-hearted and gleefully ironic. He even finds humor in exploring the caves of Tora Bora, where, it is believed, bin Laden planned out the 9/11 attacks and where he was last seen. Spurlock also uses animation and simulated video game imagery to enliven the tone.

It doesn't require a spoiler alert to report that Spurlock is ultimately unsuccessful in finding bin Laden - if that indeed was his actual goal. But if his intention was a broader one - namely, providing an amazingly comprehensive survey of attitudes in the Muslim world and to show that we are all in this fight together - he has achieved it ten times over.

Where In The World Is Osama Bin Laden? is another film by the highly creative and rather brave Morgan Spurlock. Although the film has its flaws, it makes some extremely good points about human nature and how people who seem to be so different from us are actually much more similar to us than we may have thought. The cinematography works very well throughout the film. These cameramen did an excellent job; they shot over 800 hours of footage in order to make this film! (Now that's an editing job!) Morgan doesn't really need to act much in this movie; he's on a quasi-serious mission to find Osama Bin Laden. I think he knew from the start that he was making a film about people we may fear when we don't need to fear them; I doubt that he was actually expecting Bin Laden to come jumping out of a cave somewhere and say, "OK, Morgan, here I am! I surrender!"

We first see Morgan preparing for his trip. He gets more injections than I could count; and he takes some training exercises to be able to protect himself against grenade bombs, would-be assassins and more. He also has to leave his pregnant wife behind him but he promises her that he'll be back in time for their baby to be born.

Once Morgan gets where he's going, he asks people questions. In fact, he asks a lot of questions. We get fascinating interviews with people on the street and there are more interviews with some other people who were kind enough to let Morgan Spurlock into their homes. Morgan frequently, if not always, asks them their opinion of America, Israel, Osama Bin Laden and more. We often see people saying that they have nothing against the American people; but wow, how they hate the American government. He does encounter some trouble from a few people who don't want to be interviewed; but I don't think he was too surprised by this.

Along the way Morgan Spurlock uses humor in an apparent attempt to make the subject matter a bit easier for people to swallow. In my opinion, this didn't always work. For example, Spurlock asks an Afghani man about a Tora Bora amusement park plan, Spurlock suggests that they call it "the bomb." Hey, the country's been at war for 30 years--that's not necessarily going to be perceived as a funny joke, Morgan! The guy being interviewed didn't laugh; and even though some of us might laugh I wouldn't have taken that chance with someone in a tough foreign country where trouble is easy to find, especially when they had been nice enough to sit down with me for an interview. In addition, Spurlock mocks both his own efforts as well as the international efforts to find Bin Laden for real; he approaches the entrance to a cave and yells "Osama., are you in there?" Yeah, it IS funny; but it's also naïve and silly, not to mention potentially dangerous--who knows who might really have been in that cave at the time? Morgan also skips over Iran and Iraq; he apparently knew enough to set some limits on his quest to find Bin Laden.

Overall, the film is about a B+. Morgan Spurlock's true message in this film is that we should fear other cultures less and recognize them as being much more like us than they are different from us. He could have done a better job of proving this when he went to one or two of the countries he visited; but he gets his point across nonetheless. I recommend this film for people studying this situation and sociologists will have a field day watching this film.

Not quite up to Morgan Spurlock's superlative documentary Super Size Me, WHERE IN THE WORLD IS OSAMA BIN LADEN is still topical and interesting. Where Super Size Me had a distinct focus, this newest documentary loses that. Let me explain...

Initially set up as a means to make the world a safer place for Morgan, his mate, and their future child, Morgan sets out to find bin Laden so that he can help the world become a safer place. Knowing that the U.S. has spent billions of dollars and countless soldier hours looking for this elusive, tall, dialysized jihadist, Morgan figures maybe all it'll take is one determined future father.

Scouring the globe as if he were Carmen Sandiego(Everyone gets that analogy, right? No? Look it up), Spurlock becomes a fearless explorer in and around the Middle East, searching for this dangerous killer. But what starts out as a journey of righteousness turns more into a discovery of the differences that divide the Muslim world from itself, from western religious doctrine, and from the policies of the U.S.. This is where things went a bit haywire for the film. Although most viewers will probably be forgiving of this since journeys like this often lead down other paths, it still felt awkward as Spurlock jumped around between political dignitaries, religious fanatics (on both sides), and U.S. ground-based troops in Afghanistan and how they felt about the war effort.

It is commendable that Spurlock used animation (like the aforementioned Carmen Sandiego) to get his point across. The silliness of the animation was meant to show how crazy his quest might seem to us but, in the end, it comes across as something he simply had to do ...if not for his future kid, then for himself and the rest of us who live his experience vicariously.

The ending is a pretty big letdown and it didn't line-up very well with the beginning of the film. Seeing the alternate ending on the dvd, I really feel it would've been a much better true ending to the documentary.

Still, this is a very topical issue that shows not just one man's quest for answers, but a challenge to the U.S. that shows how close one man can come to finding Osama. Perhaps the U.S. military really doesn't want to find this madman. What reason would we have then for staying over there? Oil? Of course not!

Even though I thought the hook of searching for Osama Bon Laden bordered on the silly and gimmicky, I ended up being extremely fascinated and moved by this film. Like the book "Three cups of Tea" (also highly recommended), it chips away at the monolithic Western stereotype of the Muslim world with small slices of reality that are rarely seen in the mainstream media. These intriguing interviews with citizens throughout the Middle East and footage of the poverty and hardship most of them endure are compelling evidence that bringing schools, clean water, and human rights to this part of the world will do infinitely more to prevent terrorism than all of our billions spent on "the war on terror." This IS the proverbial picture worth a thousand words, and I hope President-elect Obama and all of his security advisors will see it and take it to heart.

An admirably earnest, if flawed attempt by the likeable documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock ("Super Size Me") to reach out to the "everyday folks" living in the Middle East and show Americans that they're really just like us, after all; you know- "people are people", and all that. Oh, and while he was there, he thought he might get some leads on where Osama's bin hidin'.

Spurlock's concept for his new film was inspired by his wife's pregnancy (their first child). While brainstorming proactive steps he could take to ensure a "safe world" for his unborn, he thought he might start by doing his part to end the war on terror-by helping our hapless government locate You Know Who. Using the gimmicky framing device of an ersatz videogame to introduce film segments, we follow Spurlock's progress as he travels to Egypt, Israel, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Morocco in search of the vox populi (and the slippery tall dude with the walkie-talkie).

With the exception of a few extra-cranky customers, like a genuinely scary radical Muslim cleric with a vitriolic demeanor and a Charlie Manson glare to match, most of Spurlock's subjects seem to be expressing a variation on "You know, I really don't have any truck with the American people, but I do hate your government with the intensity of a thousand suns." Proving of course, that they really ARE like us (well, those of us who are hip to the present administration's ongoing 7-year mission to completely obliterate what's left of America's goodwill around the globe). And, predictably, the response to queries on bin-Laden's whereabouts is usually a shrug and a laugh, or a vague point in the direction of the border they share with a neighboring country.

There are a couple genuinely funny moments that temper the underlying grimness of the volatile politics in the region. For instance, a high ranking official in Tora Bora (location of the infamous subterranean HQ for bin Laden in Afghanistan) speaks enthusiastically of his proposed plan to turn the caves into a tourist attraction. Spurlock is to be admired for keeping a straight face throughout this particular interview.

Unfortunately however, it becomes apparent that Spurlock's mission (such as it is) doesn't really have any real driving theme; what you're left with is an unfocused travelogue featuring a series of amusing but somewhat repetitive "fish out of water" vignettes (frankly, he could pick up a few lessons on how to more convincingly pull off the ironic faux-journalist shtick by studying Sascha Baron Cohen or the maestros of "The Daily Show") The film is a closer cousin to "The Road to Morocco" than it is to "The Road to Guantanamo". Or to put in another way, it's more about the sights, than it is about the insights.