Twilightfa
Watch something else. There are very few redeeming qualities to this film.
Marva-nova
Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.
Bob
This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.
njmollo
Taking Liberties is an interesting documentary that is successful in showing how the Blair Government slavishly followed the foreign and domestic policies of a corrupt American administration.Yet one very important issue that exposes the authoritarianism of the Blair Government is not addressed and that is the refusal of a full and independent inquiry into the events of 7/7.Taking Liberties automatically assumes that the events of 7/7 are in accordance with the official Government narrative. This official explanation is taken as a given by the makers of Taking Liberties even when the British Government themselves have admitted that the official story put out to the public is erroneous.Obviously there was a desire on the part of the Blair Government to leave the events of 7/7 unexplored. Why?The mainstream media is simply refusing to discuss the numerous anomalies and coincidences concerning the events of 7/7 and 9/11. The BBC purposely goes out of its way to misinform the general public by producing "hit pieces" that vilify those with opposing opinions and tries to align them with "holocaust deniers" or "nutty conspiracy theorists".Generally the mainstream media response to awkward questions and mounting evidence that contests the official explanation of 7/7 and 9/11 is to remain coldly silent.Taking Liberties should at least have explored why Blair was so adamant that the events of 7/7, the worst attack on Britain since the blitz, did not deserve a full and independent inquiry.
g-wensley
Well this is not about hiding, but about becoming cognescent of the draconian creep taking away personal privacy, and public freedoms and liberties. It is not about terrorism, but about the misuse of the terrorism act to surveille the population. It is about agenda, opaque to public perception and concern.Non-professor Stahlman would have you believe it is all bunkum, even though it is unfolding right before his and your eyes. He would seek to curtail your curiosity in seeing this movie, with petty innuendo and obsfucation. You have your mind to decide what you see and don't see. It is for you to decide the importance of the film...whether the film is crap or not, it carries a very important message, and it is one you should at least be aware of.Some reviewers have called the film entertaining and humorous, it is neither, Its subject matter is neither entertaining or humorous, it is serious and downright scary. Sometime in the future you will face the very thing this film discusses. No matter how hard you try to keep yourself and your family out of it (as if it is someone else's problem, someone else's fear), it will come calling. The question you need to ask is...What will you do when it does? How will you be able to deal with it, and what resources will there be at hand to help you? Well, if you do not prime yourself before hand, you will perceive there to be none.I found myself getting extremely angry whilst watching the film, because it reminded me all too starkly that what was defeated with Hitler, is now winning with Blair and the current imbecilic incumbent of No 10. It is winning through a series of gradual unfoldments, incremental tightenings of the noose around each of our necks. You already feel it in your personal economy, the means by which you are enchained to repeatable patterns of behaviour, day in and day out.Generally the media will not report it. When they do, they will sing the constriction of your liberty as beneficial to you. They will make it sound like a good idea; but like all good ideas, they are open to abuse sometime in the future. Freedom and liberty has to be constantly guarded and fought for. You cannot expect government to be benign, and for your good to safeguard your liberty. It will not do that, it will safeguard its own, and you being freedom and liberty-loving, are a threat to that.If you've nothing to hide, and have nothing to fear, why then the systematic reduction in your freedom, liberty and personal privacy? Simply because, your government considers you to be a potential terrorist, and will misuse the terrorist act to defend, not you, but itself. Individually, you are expendable, collectively, you are a mob. See Naomi Wolf - From Freedom to Fascism ( A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot). This is not just happening in Britain, but around the world. See the movie and discern for yourself, it just might open your eyes.
Jonty Nuttall
...ask what your country can do to you.The central thesis of this film aligns itself nicely with the Mark Thomas (who appears in the film) comment that "If You're not p*****d off, you've not been paying attention". It shows by example the story of the gradual erosion of our civil liberties that has been occurring in the recent years, concentrating particularly on the last decade. This is a subject which should have us all handing over our hard earned to be educated and entertained by.The artful thing about this film is the fact that it cleverly manages to take a fairly dry subjects of civil liberties and human rights, "Not normally box office dynamite" to quote Chris Atkins, and present it in an entertaining and even amusing way. Very much in the tradition of The Road to Guantanamo this film is as shocking but with a greater capacity to entertainment, which will hopefully mean that it will appeal to a wider audience.Whether you believe that it is the press to blame for forcing gullible media hungry politicians into rushing through knee jerk, badly drafted laws or that there are more sinister forces at work or especially if you are blissfully unaware of what your government has been doing in your name this film holds something for you. See it and tell your friends!
Cliff Hanley
This is a collection of true stories, all products of the UK's New Labour government and the so-called War on Terror. It opens with the bus-full of peaceful demonstrators (friends of mine) on their way to Fairford to complain about it's being used for bombing expeditions to Iraq, stopped, brutally forced to remain on the (no-toilet) bus and escorted back to London by a horde of police vans and bikes. The patch-work continues with Walter Wolfgang, the elderly and eminently respectable party member roughed up by ape-men for shouting 'Rubbish' at Jack Straw, Pinochetist Home Secretary. Rose and Ellen, two young sisters arrested on a peaceful demo at an airport, held in solitary for 36 hours, thrown out in the night, their money and mobiles stolen by the police, and warned that speaking to each other would violate their terms of bail. Mouloud Sihali, found innocent in court, but then imprisoned in his own home for two years. Omar Deghayes, a British resident who has been held in Guantanamo for five years and is being left at the mercy of the government that murdered his father. Also the RAF war veteran arrested for wearing an anti-Bush and Blair T-shirt; an innocent man shot in a police raid based on a faked-up claim about a Ricin poison factory, and a major new change in the law to allow the government to stop one man from keeping his lonely anti-war vigil outside the Houses of Parliament.Britain has a history of control freakery: in Malaysia after 1945 we separated off the ethnic Chinese population, putting them in reservations where they could be controlled while we maintained war with the Chinese insurgents outside. The UK today is looking ever more like a large reservation, with the sea for a wall. The government contends that we are threatened from outside, and just like anyone with a paranoia problem, makes that threat a reality by its pre-emptive wars. This allows it to behave as the 1939 government did, removing all our rights for our own good.Right to Protest, Right to Freedom of Speech. Right to Privacy. Right not to be detained without charge, Innocent Until Proved Guilty. Prohibition from Torture. All listed on the screen, and one-by-one, ripped off. Taking Liberties portrays these real stories of liberty loss using up-dated interviews, citizen/journalist footage, newsreel, stunts, and comment from comedian Mark Thomas, Observer writer Henry Porter, Tony Benn, Amnesty, academics and lawyers. Narration from Ashley Jensen (Extras, Ugly Betty); a powerful soundtrack with tracks by, among others, Oasis, Radiohead, The Stranglers and Franz Ferdinand. It almost loses pace 80 minutes in, but the content carries it. By turns horrifying and good-humoured, it's being touted as the UK's equivalent of Fahrenheit 9/11, but it is without the former's flaws, and it's of much more immediate importance. A pity that the distribution deal limited it to out-of-town multiplexes in the UK, so much of its target audience were unaware of its very existence. CLIFF HANLEY
