While clearly this is visually captivating, there is an unpleasant sense that we're being taken on a tour of YouTube clips of death and loss, rather than being given any proper analysis of events, or even a decent exposition on the supposed theme of this film.
I get that this was made as an art installation, and that it's not always necessary for a documentary to be a huge political and sociological examination of events, but this doesn't even succeed on the terms which it itself establishes. Juxtaposing the footage of terrorist incidents with other news reels and random moments from TV, interspersed with monologues and discussions from a book (I think), it still seems to be trying to make a point, perhaps about the way we view such incidents as just one of the outputs from our modern media, but it lacks any coherence in the way this is done, and fails to deliver on it's own objectives.
The exploitative nature of the film is brought sharply into focus when we're shown footage of fatal plane crashes that have absolutely no connection to hijacking or terrorism. Whatever other arguments it may want to make are destroyed by these random inclusions. It lacks credibility. It's little more than a version of 'Faces of Death'.
I get that this was made as an art installation, and that it's not always necessary for a documentary to be a huge political and sociological examination of events, but this doesn't even succeed on the terms which it itself establishes. Juxtaposing the footage of terrorist incidents with other news reels and random moments from TV, interspersed with monologues and discussions from a book (I think), it still seems to be trying to make a point, perhaps about the way we view such incidents as just one of the outputs from our modern media, but it lacks any coherence in the way this is done, and fails to deliver on it's own objectives.
The exploitative nature of the film is brought sharply into focus when we're shown footage of fatal plane crashes that have absolutely no connection to hijacking or terrorism. Whatever other arguments it may want to make are destroyed by these random inclusions. It lacks credibility. It's little more than a version of 'Faces of Death'.