Buried In The Sand – The Deception Of The American People is a new documentary that presents, for lack of a better term, the right wing side of the argument about the current situation in Iraq and the US military involvement thereof. Mark Taylor sits behind a desk and introduces clip after clip (some of which contain hostage behading footage) to prove that Saddam Hussein was a tyrant who needed to be taken out of power not only for the safety and freedom of the Iraqi people but also as a blow to terrorists everywhere and to make America a safer place.

He does this buy showing us news clips taken from various sources (much of it Arabic and Muslim community television and web broadcasts) that show us such sights as the after effects of insurgent attacks, Iraqi soldiers abusing prisoners (this offsets the recent abuse American solider inflicted on Iraqi prisoners, according to the narrator, as the Iraqis did it first under Saddam's regime).

And that's about all that there is to it. They also take the time to point out which democrats were opposed to the Iraqi invasion and why and provide many out of context quotes to back up their thesis. John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, and Hilary Clinton are but three of the prominent 'liberals' that are supposedly working with the left wing media to make the Iraqi invasion look like a mistake and this film attempts to put it all straight.

The problem with the documentary is that it doesn't. It provides no real facts, news, or ideas that haven't already been purported by the current administrations PR people. Regardless of how you or I or anyone else feels about the current political climate both here at home and in the Middle East, regurgitating common knowledge and backing it up with 'Mondo' style clips taken from Al Jazeera broadcasts doesn't make for a good documentary nor does it prove that the war is a good thing. It simply proves that the filmmakers are just as biased in their take on things as the more left thinking movement is in theirs. Those who think Michael Moore twists facts and presents things out of context to further his ideas and his point of view rather than report things factually without a slant of any kind would do well to witness just how skewed things can get by watching this documentary but that's about the only real reason to see it.

Fans of Faces Of Death style Mondo documentary filmmaking might enjoy the plethora of dead bodies on display in a gratuitous show of real death and atrocity footage but again, most of this is material we've already seen on the news. I suppose it's handy to have it all compiled on one handy-dandy DVD release if that's your bag but in all seriousness, the movie runs out of steam about fifteen minutes into its eighty minute run time and plays more like a Republican propaganda film than a serious look at the situation we are all having to currently live with. No matter what side you agree with or what political take on things you call your own, Buried In The Sand – The Deception Of The American People is poorly written, poorly thought out, and really isn't all that interesting.

Video:

The fullframe 1.33.1 image looks just fine when the camera is focusing on our host, Mr. Mark Taylor. The black background with a chain link fence behind the desk (???) is clean and clear and the colors look fine for material that was obviously shot on video. The archival and news broadcast footage is a different matter. I understand that much of this was captured from Internet broadcasts but watching it on a larger set much of it is blocky and pixelized to the point where some of it is almost unrecognizable. Of course combat footage isn't going to looks as nice as professionally shot studio footage but there is so much mpeg compression of a lot of the images that even taking that into account this feature doesn't look so hot at all.