Entertainment

Dull doc can’t handle the truth

The doc “You Don’t Like the Truth” boasts that it’s the first documentary to show interrogation footage from Guantanamo. Unfortunately for it, the interview with Canadian intel agents is so polite, it wouldn’t have made it past the first draft at the writers’ table of “Law & Order.”

This typically appalling entry in the hug-a-terrorist documentary subgenre is about Toronto-born Omar Khadr, who was 15 years old when he was taken into custody by US forces. He was young, but not too young to have killed a US medic as a Taliban fighter.

Khadr, who grew up partly in Afghanistan and Pakistan and whose father was a friend of Osama bin Laden, is seen talking at length to CSIS (the Canadian CIA) on low-quality film that was ordered released by Canadian courts. He says his initial confession was coerced under torture, but he did later reiterate that confession in court after obtaining full access to legal counsel. His defenders say he confessed, in 2010, only to reduce his sentence — to eight more years.

This film is narratively inert (we spend a lot of time listening to the same questions being asked over and over) and, like virtually all docs in its genre, less than vigorous in its pursuit of truth. Every person interviewed to comment on Khadr’s case (such as his lawyers and cellmates) is sympathetic to him. Mostly, the film seeks to pluck emotional chords. Several minutes go by while we watch Khadr, during a break in his interview, weeping for his mommy. Barely acknowledged in this topsy-turvy world: US Army medic Christopher Speer — the soldier he admitted killing and who left behind two small children. How many tears have they shed?