“The Mauritanian” is a powerful true story that shows how far the American legal system has come, and in many ways how flawed it remains.
After 9/11, America wanted everyone with a role in the destruction to pay. It was a witch hunt, and someone needed to burn. Hundreds of prisoners were detained at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba. One of those was Mohamedou Ould Salahi, or as a fellow inmate nicknamed him, the Mauritanian. Salahi was held on the belief that he recruited the man who flew the plane into the south tower of the World Trade Center.
The movie is based on Salahi’s memoir of the same title. It shares his side of what happened to him after 9/11, as the U.S. locked him up, without charge, for 14 years. As much as it is his story, it’s also the story of his American defense attorney Nancy Hollander (Jodie Foster), her associate Teri Duncan (Shailene Woodley), and the military prosecutor named Stuart Couch (Benedict Cumberbatch) who has a personal stake in seeking the death penalty for Salahi (Tahar Rahim).
Foster and Cumberbatch are as good as it gets in Hollywood and don’t disappoint here. They come across as intelligent people who stick to their morals under tough circumstances. Woodley is okay, though her character comes across as irrelevant. But it’s Rahim who steals the show as the terror suspect Salahi. He rides the rollercoaster of hope and wears the toll that the interrogations have taken on him. After seeing footage of the real Salahi during credits, I appreciated Rahim’s work even more.
Trying to learn the facts for the case proves challenging for both sides. The defense is only given heavily redacted summaries of the interrogations of Salahi and has to rely on the handwritten letters he sends them. The prosecution needs more than the summaries to convict Salahi, but nobody seems to want to give any more detail to work with. It builds to a shocking reveal of the extreme torture of Gitmo detainees by the U.S. military.
Director Kevin Macdonald’s film shows how difficult it can be to keep emotions separate from the rules of law. In one scene, Hollander has a beer with Couch at the Guantanamo Bay gift shop. While acknowledging his desire to punish those responsible for 9/11, Hollander poses the question, “What if you’re wrong?” The burden is on the prosecution to “prove it,” and despite holding him for years, Salahi repeatedly states that they have no evidence against him.
Except, that’s not exactly true. The suspicion is understandable. He is open about having trained with Al-Qaeda back in the ’90s, even though he says he fought alongside the U.S. against the Soviets. He welcomed some really bad guys into his home while studying in Germany. He even received a call from Osama Bin Laden’s satellite phone (from his cousin, he says). Salahi had an answer for all of these suspicious points, but the game changed when a new interrogation team took over. After unimaginable torture and threats to his family, Salahi wrote a confession to all sorts of terrible crimes. Of course, such brutal coaxing makes the confession unusable in court, as he would say anything to make the living Hell stop.
This is an important part of the story that the movie should have treated with more care. What all was actually in his confession? How did he draw the inner workings of Al-Qaeda in his fake confession without knowing things? That detail is glossed over in the movie, though probably detailed better in the book it’s based on.
After the torture bombshell, the courts reach a decision and the movie seems to be over, only to throw some text on the screen explaining that it wasn’t the end after all. What should have been a gut punch to the audience is rushed as the movie then speeds to a clunky conclusion. But at 129 minutes long already, I guess the screenwriter felt enough was enough.
“The Mauritanian” an emotional movie that pulls into question how far people will go to get their truth, while highlighting the casualties left in their wake.
4/5
“The Mauritanian” is available in certain theaters and digitally on demand.
Scott McDaniel is a journalist who lives with his wife and three kids in Bargersville.
