Taxi to the Dark Side

Cinephile deep dive

The take

Alex Gibney directs. Maryse Alberti behind the camera. Ivor Guest scores. Sloane Klevin cuts. A commercial under-performer on release. Produced in United States of America. Dialogue in English.

Trivia

Things worth knowing

• 1Shot for just $1.0M — micro-budget by Hollywood standards.
• 2Earned back only 27% of its budget on initial theatrical — a commercial disappointment on release.
• 3Released 19 years ago.
• 4Lean credit list — fewer than 30 people officially credited.
• 5Directed by Alex Gibney, shot by Maryse Alberti. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.
• 6Original score by Ivor Guest. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.
• 7Editor Sloane Klevin shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.
• 8Alex Gibney and Brian Keith Allen and Moazzam Begg carry the top of the cast.
• 9Marketing tagline: "In 2002, a young cab driver picked up a few passengers near his home in Afghanistan... He never returned".
• 10IMDB entry: tt0854678 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.

The technical file

Cinematography

Maryse Alberti

Original score

Ivor Guest

Editing

Sloane Klevin

Runtime

106 min · 1h 46m

Status

Released

Budget

$1,000,000

Box office

$274,661

Return

27% of budget

Original language

EN

IMDB

Taxi to the Dark Side (2007) ↗

Also by

Alex Gibney

• 
  30 for 30 - ESPN Films

  2011 · ★ 9.0
• 
  AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies

  1998 · ★ 8.4
• 
  Wise Guy: David Chase and The Sopranos

  2024 · ★ 8.3
• 
  Billions

  2016 · ★ 7.8
• 
  30 for 30 Shorts

  2012 · ★ 7.8
• 
  The Crime of the Century

  2021 · ★ 7.8

Community reviews

What people are saying

• CinemaSerf2026-05-17
  ★ 7/10

  Although this is ostensibly about the death in custody of a taxi driver; it actually pans out to provide for a savage critique on the policy of the George W. Bush administration towards those incarcerated under military jurisdiction following the atrocities of 9/11. Using a fairly extensive array of archive footage and pretty condemnatory photography, this interviews many of those victims and their legal representatives who fought to get a fair trial for clients whom the US Government denied any sort of legal status and thereby representation. It attempts to scrutinise this (semi)official but hardline position taken, though not using any direct contributions made especially for this film, by quoting Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, VP Dick Cheney and the President himself as they played a game of roulette with the lives of the prisoners, the Geneva Convention, the US Congress and even their own Supreme Court as they to continued to detain, humiliate, torture and even murder Afghani (and other) citizens whom may or, more likely, may not have had information relating to the Taliban or Al Queda. The graphic imagery of the beastial treatment of the men under their charge comes across as sometimes almost like the photographers are taking trophies for themselves. They appear to be celebrating the degradation of these terrified and usually naked human beings whilst their superiors at Bagram, Guantanamo or in Washington left them with vaguely defined orders that left many of the soldiers - who believed that they were obeying orders and doing their duty to their country - exposed to war crimes proceedings whilst their bosses donned their teflon suits. This presents us with a very clear indictment of the abuse of executive authority, especially when underpinned by a feeling of fear and anxiety from a populace that might have been a little ripe for the manipulation after the attack on the Twin Towers. It asks questions for us, too. What might we consider legitimate if our own family had been a victim? Might we all take something of a more vigilante attitude if we were being more personally affected? Might we all be capable of suspending the rule of law, even of habeus corpus, if we felt our own survival was on the line? This isn't meant to be a debating documentary, and the fact that none of the antagonists here gave any form of rebuttle to the accusations or motivations the film demonstrates is a shame as it would have been interesting to have heard more from the politicians and from the soldiers who engaged in these ghastly activities - some doubtlessly more enthusiastically than others, to establish more about what choices they may or may not have had when it came to carrying out some frankly dehumanising commands. Are democracy and the rule of law simply a veneer when the executive chooses to disregard it, and if the public don't know what is being carried out in their name, what can we do about it?

  Read full review ↓

Production companies

Who made it

• WI

  Wider Film Projects

  US

• 

  Jigsaw Productions

  US

Key crew

• EditorSloane Klevin
• ProducerAlex Gibney
• ProducerSusannah Shipman
• Executive ProducerJedd Wider
• Co-ProducerBlair Foster
• Executive ProducerDon Glascoff
• Executive ProducerTodd Wider
• Co-ProducerMartin Fisher
• Executive ProducerMette Heide
• Executive ProducerMette Hoffman Meyer
• Executive ProducerDon Edkins
• ProducerEva Orner
• Co-ProducerSloane Klevin

Themes & keywords

What it's about, really

• taxi
• afghanistan
• guantanamo bay
• torture chamber

Release history · US

When it landed

• Theatrical (limited)2008-01-18
• Theatrical2007-04-28· Tribeca Film Festival

Also known as

International titles

• Taxi zur HölleDE
• Um Táxi para a EscuridãoPT
• Um Táxi para a EscuridãoBR
• 驶向阴霾的出租HK
• 计程车司机之死CN
• 黑暗纪事CN