Backstabbing for Beginners

This film tells the story of a young diplomat who navigates an impossible maze of lies, deceit and death threats.

The diplomat is in a huge dilemma, but he navigates the situation well and ends up way more fortunate than many others in the film. The film is a little slow, and can use tighter editing. Still, it is an interesting film to watch.

Everybody knew this was a corrupt operation - I was in Baghdad in 97 and met some UN observers one told me when she went to the warehouses to check and they were empty, her bosses said to her "shut up and take your money"....there were some highly moral people hi up in the UN though like Dennis Halliday, Hans von Sponeck and Jutta Burghardt, of WFP who like the other two resigned. A very shameful time for the UN and of course the people of Iraq who still suffer to this day. This story needs to be told and the film should be pushed but it wont be...........

It's predictable but interesting enough to see it through. Fails to name names other than the usual sacrificial scapegoat major organisations toss out to the wolves - I.E. press and public. The U.N. is generally considered a useless talking shop, but there's literally billions of pounds sloshing around it's various departments. This film retells what is the tip of the iceberg, add in national foreign aid programmes you understand why certain leaders of poor countries end up with more income than the nations GDP. To paraphrase Churchill, capitalism is awful but it's the best we've got. I do agree with others who mentioned the pointless even annoying expletives used by the Kingsley character. Some points yes it would have been effective, but you end up thinking is he some old school mafia boss or a U.N. under secretary.

As a movie the piece is nothing spectacular and as such might not capture the average movie fan but for us who like a movie based on real events this is pretty good, to me a true story based movie is almost always better than the fictional one. Before you go saying "you really believe there are 100% true movies" ill stop you right there, no, i do not, but you dont have to take the movie at face value it can inspire you to do your own research about the matter if you are interested. To be frank i dont think i (or you) ever actually heard a 100% true story, human memory is not 100%, rarely anything is, this was close enough to get the point across.

This was a very big scandal, there is a reviewer here on IMDB who stated it is a fictional movie and that he/she was actually involved in Food-for-Oil which was nothing but sunshine and rainbows. I have a hard time believing that. Why did the people involved fled, why did all those companies settled and paid enormous fines, just not to go thru a hassle of proving oneself innocent? I am sure there are very fine men and women in the UN who really try to help but any and every organization is susceptible to corruption and UN is no different, where there is power there is abuse of power.

I wish there were more movies that are doing scandals of the time past so we dont forget and dont let them repeat.

My wife and I watched this movie on Amazon streaming. It is based on a book presumably accurate in its analysis of the situation in 2002 and 2003.

It was shortly after the 9/11 attacks in the USA, pressure was being put on Saddam Hussein, and one UN-backed program was "oil for food" program where Iraq would supply oil and in return would get food and medicines for the suffering population.

Theo James plays the lead character, Michael, who takes a job working for the UN. His immediate boss is Ben Kingsley as Pasha, a man from Cyprus who nominally was in charge of the program. When Michael writes a summary report, including the data showing up to 30% of the money was being skimmed off illegally, Pasha took those pages and immediately shredded them. PLus food and medicines were not being distributed evenly to those in need.

This movie isn't overly interesting in its style, but the story is interesting, to show how widespread corruption is in high places all over the world.