STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE (D: Errol Morris, U.S.). 118 minutes. April 26, 9:15 pm, Isabel Bader. Rating: NNNN
Errol Morris, the recipient of Hot Docs’ Outstanding Achievement Award in 2005, returns with this characteristically reserved dissection of the atrocities committed by American troops on Iraqi detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison.
The ground was previously covered by Rory Kennedy in last year’s Ghosts Of Abu Ghraib, but the direct-address intimacy of Morris’s Interrotron camera system and access to infamous thumbs-up girl Lynndie England – still in military prison when Kennedy was making her documentary – make this a very different work.
A chilling look at the systemic cruelty tacitly authorized and openly encouraged within the U.S. military, this is as close to a war crimes indictment as we’re likely to get.
