Watch My Trip to Al-Qaeda For Free

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

This isn't so much Alex Gibney's documentary as it is Lawrence Wright's powerpoint presentation. So I think any criticism must be leveled at Wright (which has been the case in other reviews).The documentary attempts to draw conclusions from a large and complex political environment, and as Wright has years of personal experience here, he draws on this to make these conclusions. This is a problem, as the micro is being used to reinforce the macro. Now, I'm not saying wide conclusions cant be drawn from an isolated case, look at The Oath (2010) for an example of how to do this well. But here Wright's focus causes the viewer to have an unclear understanding of important points of his argument. I.e. the difference between an Islamist and a Jihadist is not shown well. And much depth seems missing from the actions of the West in breeding this 'humiliation'; for example the trade embargo on Iraq post the Gulf War, harming millions of innocents, is completely missing. Wright's goal is to understand the motivation and mind-set of the jihadist, and I think he fails due to his starting point being his personal experiences.Wright's experiences however, happen to provide the most interesting parts of this documentary. The wire-tapping he encountered for example, held my attention far more than his introspective rant to finish. This documentary really should have just centered one or two of these personal aspects in isolation, or even just Wright's life. The conclusions would have been much stronger.

Very well made documentary well structured on the motive and evolution of terrorism.It gives a number of interesting reasons and explanation of the world and the history and the social problems that produced the individuals that participate in such organizations.It almost gives a real and human aspect to them.The idea of how a human being is transformed into becoming such a type of murderer.Although it must be said that it leaves out a very important aspect.The responsibility of the Western countries on the creation of the circumstances leading to the rise and influence of terrorist organizations.Granted of course that the subject of the movie is not centered on that aspect, so it is quite understandable that it is not analyzed that much.One though has to explore Western intervention, alongside the events depicted in this movie, to have a more complete picture on the subject.Lastly I don't really see why some see this as giving a bad name about Islam...It just analyzes the motive of RADICAL Islamists.It never even crossed my mind that this movie attacks Islam, before i actually saw someone commenting on it.And I still think it is not.It comments on RADICAL movements and I don't really think anyone in the right mind can really confuse typical Muslims with the radical sects of Islam that are depicted here.Unless of course he is a complete idiot....

This is a very good documentary--we wouldn't expect less from filmmaker Alex Gibney--but My Trip to al-Qaeda succeeds in ways that Gibney may not have intended. Based on a play by reporter and author Lawrence Wright, the film provides a history of the development of al-Qaeda--much of it quite valuable, most of it interesting--but also exposes the man's deep-seated contempt for 'backwards' Islam, unfailing belief in American exceptionalism, and apparent inability to imagine any other kind of society than the one in which he lives. The reliance on 'good Muslims' such as former FBI agent Ali Soufan and a representative of the Quilliam Foundation, a taxpayer-funded front organization for Britain's (New) Labour Party, to tell his story is a dead giveaway: whilst Wright doesn't seem like a bad guy, he also doesn't come across as particularly curious or particularly willing to engage with alien ideas and philosophies. Perhaps his book The Looming Tower is a better representation of his thinking, but what we see here seems a bit on the shallow side.

First let me say I am a conservative at heart but I'm also open minded to hearing the point of view of others. Whether you are on the right, left or somewhere in between this is an excellent documentary. This film was completed very objectively with no perceived, at least by me, bias for one view point or another.Lawrence Wright, in my opinion, identifies well America's complacency and false sense of inferiority. Mr. Wright also describes very clearly the extent to which Al-Qaeda will go to fulfill their prophecy. This film is not intended to be a scare tactic but to simply and objectively state the facts.Every American should take an hour and half of their selfish day and watch this film. Not to brew hatred or to scare people to action but to educate them about the determination of Al-Qaeda.