Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden?

Whaddya do when your last pic made $11 mil at the box office (not bad for a $300, 000 investment) and earned an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary?

Well, if you are Morgan Spurlock, writer and director of Supersize Me!, you put down your burger, get your shots and head to the Middle East to shoot a documentary about your mock serious search for the world's most wanted terrorist.

After all, with his wife expecting the couple's first child the future father figures he's gotta do something: "If the CIA and FBI can't find him and I'm going to make the world safe for my kid it's time for a new plan. If I've learned anything from big budget action movies it's that complicated global problems are best solved by one lonely guy crazy enough to think he can fix everything before the credits roll."

Spurlock begins his quest for OBL (as he calls him) with his tongue firmly in his cheek but as he travels through Egypt, Israel, Afghanistan, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian West Bank and realizes the depth of anti-American feeling the tone of the film becomes sombre and introspective. ("It's hard for me to see how damaged the image of the country that I love and care about has become.")

Don't expect any startling insights into the Middle East conflict. Spurlock films the trip from the viewpoint of an average American coping with culture shock and trying to make sense out of a complex situation. Whether he is thinking out loud on a voice-over or addressing the audience straight to camera Spurlock invites us along to share his discoveries. And who better for a tour guide? Riding with a Jerusalem bomb squad to check out a suspicious-looking package, heading into "hard core Taliban country" with a US military patrol or approaching total strangers in a crowded Arab marketplace and asking them if they can put him in touch with Osama bin Laden Spurlock is witty, smart, observant and unflappable.

The majority of soundbites are from everyday men and women interviewed on the street, around the dinner table or in a desert village. (A young man in Tel Aviv compares the Israeli-Palestinian stalemate to a game of musical chairs. "Somebody is left without a chair ... but everybody needs to sit somewhere.")

In the end Spurlock does not find OBL. What he does discover, however, is that whether they live in big cities or small mountain villages "there are a lot more people out there who are just like us then there are who are just like him."

The movie tells the very actual life (even its not 100% but close enough to than any U.S public media from the past 10 years)of the people who live in the regions where we were told evils came from and the image of U.S and terrorists in their eyes.

The docu itself is moderate on its opinions about U.S foreign policy in the regions as well as the anti-terrorist campaign. You don't expect it tells you what is good or what is bad, but the differences as well as similarities that wildly exist in these cultures.

The movie seems to be one of those kind that try to wake up the ignorants or to introduce the concept of co-existence with differences. Unfortunately, those who would take time to watch the movie or those are able to understand it are not what the movie intended to. Many of them already known the message and the film doesn't go any further than that. And those whom the movie intended for are very likely not able to understand it and feel offended.

This is one of the most interesting films in a long time. Morgan goes to several Middle East countries, including Afghanistan, Egypt, Israel, Morocco, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan to interview the average person on the street mostly to get their views on Osama Bin Laden.

We get a glimpse of people in these countries to get their views on Osama including all ages, young and old. Some westerners may be surprised at the views of most people in these countries which is quite different than many people believe There is also a look at the topography and landmarks of some of the countries. If you want to see what people are like in these countries this film is hard to beat. This is a 10 star film.

We follow Morgan, a fairly average American guy, as he sets out to find bin Laden, (who, incidentally, has a US$25,000,000 bounty on his head!). So what's Morgan's motivation? Well, it's a fairly weak one, but it's valid to him (or his producers) at least. It is an anxiety he has about bringing a new-born into the world. Yes, that's right. He's a father-to-be when this film was shot.

Of course, finding Osama (as he is referred to so familiarly throughout the film) is no easy task - we are told several times that the F.B.I. itself has so far failed in this task. So, I guess you never really have high hopes about Morgan's chances. But we'll go along with him anyway right? What this documentary does well is that it takes you to the very ground-level of some very interesting and volatile places. Morgan divides the film up into (five?) segments, and presents the entire search as if it were a video-game - selecting "stages" that turn out to be Egypt, Afghanistan, Morroco and so on... In each and everyone of these places (with the exception of Pakistan), Morgan makes efforts to speak with everyday citizens, and quiz them on some fairly confronting topics.

This is the films best gift - we get to hear and see exactly what the West seems fairly deprived of: the common opinions of the common people. It's very enthralling, and towards the end, you cannot help but sympathise - and I suppose this is the films most powerful effect.

What the film does poorly is what the title alludes to - a search. Morgan never really searches for Osama (one point where he mockingly calls into a cave undermines any hope!), rather, he more or less sniffs around various markets, businesses, houses, slums and coffee-houses finding opinions.

And, the further annoyance is that the very motivation so heavily played upon at the beginning of the film (his baby), turns out to be a huge de-motivator for his search. He is constantly distracted, worrying and missing his wife, and we are all subjected to their personal "you-hang-up-first" "no you hang-up-first" smooshy phone calls. I can't help but think what a great film this would of been if the guy searching actually intended to find Osama! Rather, Morgan seems to want to make a travelogue, casually name-dropping the OBL when ever the moment strikes him to do so.

Granted, Morgan does visit some hot zones, such as the Gaza Strip, Tora Bora and Taliban territory, but we all know that Osama ain't there, and it's more about adding colour to the film then advancing his search.

It's a good watch for the conversation and the inside-stories, but a bad watch for those who actually want to see just how close can one man get to OBL. I am not convinced that Morgan really set out to find him, and really, I can't see that he added anything to others who may share that goal.

Let's make something perfectly clear: Morgan Spurlock doesn't really want to find Osama Bin Laden. I can only assume his real motivation for making Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden? runs parallel with his motive behind Super Size Me - to educate fat, stupid Americans. Considering everyone around the world knows there's a lot of fat, stupid Americans, you could say the target audience for this documentary would be as big as the one that made SSM a must-see hit. But, to Spurlock's detriment, there are things people are ready to hear and there are things they aren't. Based on the critical and box office woes of WITWIOBL, it would seem no one in the USA wants to hear the truth about the so-called War on Terror.

Spurlock might be preaching to the choir of informed critics who know exactly why the US is globally detested, but right here in the good old US of A, he's asking the masses to swallow a very bitter pill. I say the pill is bitter because he spends the duration of his film humanizing Muslims, letting them speak for themselves in ways that radically contradict the conveniently palatable perception Americans have of their (ahem) enemy. The Muslims Spurlock interviews are not gun toting, blood thirsty, irrational, unreasonable or anti-American Jihadists, instead they are the exact opposite: peaceful, reasonable, rational, logical and kind. While there is no doubt a shared resentment towards the US Government, the resentment is justified.

Spurlock doesn't pull any punches in his quest, he tells the history of US foreign policy as it happened and this version doesn't hide the fact the US has been in bed with brutal dictators and regimes for a very long time. The fitting quote provided by FDR sums up the US attitude to their profitable alliances with murderous thugs: "He may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch." This understanding of US foreign policy begs the question: is it any surprise they hate the US Government? All actions have resultant repercussions and if you consider that US foreign policy has marginalized, oppressed and killed millions of people, then is it any surprise when the victims bite back?

There's one particular interview with one of Spurlock's subjects that basically makes us ask: if the US military can describe civilian casualties as "collateral damage," then what do you call the innocent Americans killed by a Jihadist's attack? It's all a matter of perspective and Spurlock posits the uncomfortable reality that war is war and their loss of innocent lives hurt and resonate just as much as ours do.WITWIOBL is by no means a deep or probing study of the issues in the Middle East; it glosses over the complex history of the region and, at times, does so in a very adolescent way. Spurlock, an obvious student of the Michael Moore school of documentary film-making, makes light of many topics by (over) using animated cartoons as a means to parlay a number of ideas. Spurlock uses a mock-video game template to structure WITWIOBL and, despite it being a new approach, it doesn't do the film any good. While on one hand I can appreciate Spurlock is trying to bring a little levity to a very serious subject, his gags are rarely funny and his overall schtick is wearisome. But if you stick with WITWIOBL you'll be rewarded with a film less about Spurlock's self-indulgences and more about having a better understanding of the Muslim world.

Spurlock concludes that, ultimately, Muslims and Americans want the same thing: to have a better world to bring up their children in. Fine for those who have kids or want them, but I don't. As a consolation, I'd be happy to settle with living in a world where people were introspective enough to realize it takes two to tango. WITWIOBL might open the eyes of a few, but in a country divided by two political parties, asking a filmmaker to bridge the divide between two foreign world's might be asking a bit much. Nevertheless, WITWIOBL is well intentioned even if it has nothing to do with it's title.

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