"The Road to Guantanamo" is Michael Winterbottom's straight- down-the-middle account of three British citizens of Pakistani heritage who end up logging time in the compound at Camp Delta. In this docudrama re-creation, Shafiq (Riz Ahmed), Ruhel (Farhad Harun) and Monir (Waqar Siddiqui) appear to be without serious harm in mind, as far from jihad as could be imagined. They head to Pakistan, however, with extremely bad timing, as far as Western security services might be concerned, immediately after Sept. 11, 2001.

The best part of the film chronicles their early misadventures as they travel from their home in Tipton, England, to Pakistan. As pure documentary, the film brilliantly conjures without romanticization the chaos, squalor and fragility of Pakistan on the edge of what is just about to become a war zone. This isn't the Disney version; it's frightening, especially for the boys, who, even though they speak the language, are more or less Western by culture and inclination.

"Guantanamo," it must be said, is certainly fair, and it clings tightly to the accounts of the three actual young men to whom these events happened. Thus you can say: The authorities should have been more discriminating in separating the armed combatants from the unarmed visitors. Or you can say: If you are caught with the armed, you must be treated as if armed until proven otherwise innocent.

The key question the film raises: Is what happened to the Tipton Three an outrage? It allows us to draw our own conclusions strictly on an eye-of-the-beholder basis.

-- Stephen Hunter

Contains violence and extreme psychological discomfort. Some scenes in Arabic with subtitles.