Errol Morris’s investigation into the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse scandal focuses on the photographs of detainees being grotesquely treated by grinning guards. Interviews with some of the abusers reveal that the context in which those images were created may not be quite what you thought it to be (although the guards still emerge without a scrap of honour to their names). Morris’s findings are worth your time, but his response to them is frustrating. For much of the film, he seems less interested in exposing the US army's misdeeds than in pondering the untrustworthiness of photography. His musings on this subject aren’t compelling enough to compensate for the film’s vagueness in apportioning blame for what went on in Abu Ghraib.

15, 116 mins

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