TRIO OF BRITS LAND AT GUANTANAMO.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

How much of ``The Road to Guantanamo'' to believe? Presented from the point of view of three young British Muslims who spent more than two years at the U.S. terrorist prison in Cuba, this hard-hitting combination of documentary, news footage and dramatic re-enactment certainly tells us a lot of things we wish weren't true.

Yet even if we are willing to accept that American guards and interrogators are uniformly sadistic and clueless, there are things about this movie that make such propositions difficult to accept. English filmmaker Michael Winterbottom (``In This World,'' ``24 Hour Party People''), who co-directed ``Guantanamo'' with film editor and videomaker Mat Whitecross, has stated that he tried to tell the subjects' story as a lawyer would a client's, with no outside effort to verify what they told him.

That makes what we see suspect enough. But Winterbottom and Whitecross make matters worse by not individualizing the young men. They've made a clenchingly visceral film about the horrors of war and being imprisoned with neither rights nor charges. But we're asked to share in the prisoners' fear and pain without ever really getting to know them. Which is kind of strange, since a good part of the movie involves the actual Tipton Three, as they're called, speaking directly to the camera about their experiences. Some will be satisfied just to hear polite-sounding English guys describe American atrocities (``Guantanamo'' won the Berlin Film Festival's directing prize earlier this year). But it kept feeling to me like these fellas had more explaining to do.

Shot in Pakistan and Afghanistan but mostly in Iran, the movie's staged scenes are its most effective, especially its ground-eye views of the U.S.-led ouster of Afghanistan's Taliban. How did four barely religious, nonpolitical buddies from the Midlands end up under our bombs there? Seems that Asif Iqbal's relatives had found him a bride -- on Sept. 10, 2001, wouldn't ya know -- and a few weeks later he flew to Pakistan to check her out. Then three of his pals back in Tipton, Ruhel Ahmed, Shafiq Rasul and Monir Ali, got the call to head east for the wedding. The four Brits' idea of a bachelor party was to go on carnival rides and shop in Karachi while anti-American demonstrations filled the streets. At a mosque, they heard an imam urge the faithful to visit Afghanistan and give humanitarian aid before the U.S. invaded. This, the Three insist, sounded like a cool thing to do. I don't know whether they're fools or liars, but that's what they did.

A series of apparent misadventures led to Ruhel, Shafiq and Asif getting captured by the Northern Alliance, who then turned them over to the Americans. Going on the logical assumption that Brits caught with fleeing Taliban might just be al-Qaida sympathizers, our military shipped the Three off to Guantanamo. After two years of stress positions, beatings, living in glorified dog kennels and getting frogmarched everywhere with sacks over their heads, Asif, Ruhel and Shafiq were returned to England uncharged. Seems someone finally cross-checked and found that the guys had been seen (by their parole officers, no less) in Tipton during the months U.S. intelligence had convinced itself they were palling around with Osama.

As for the film's Americans and British officials -- well, there was that one guard who was brave enough to kill a tarantula before it bit a sleeping prisoner. Otherwise, it's one interchangeable abusive personality after another.

Believe it? Well, Guantanamo inmates aren't killing themselves for nothing. And in every terror war in history, I'd wager, all sides committed atrocities against prisoners, if only out of misapplied zeal to prevent the next surprise attack ... or because they could.

It's probably safe to say that most of what ``The Road to Guantanamo'' depicts happened that way. A film as determined as this one is to make an impassioned statement, though, ought to have made me feel that in my heart, not just accept it intellectually.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

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THE ROAD TO GUANTANAMO - Two and one half stars

(R: violence, language, racism)

Starring: Riz Ahmed, Farhad Harun, Waqar Siddiqui, Arfan Usman.

Directors: Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross.

Running time: 1 hr. 31 min.

Playing: Laemmle Town Center 5, Encino; Laemmle Playhouse 7, Pasadena; Laemmle Sunset 5, West Hollywood; Laemmle Royal, West L.A.

In a nutshell: Part documentary, mostly dramatic re-creation of the trials of three young Brits who, swept up in the invasion of Afghanistan, spent years in the military prison.