Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #16826 in DVD
• Released on: 2007-10-15
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 101 minutes

DVD Description
With the 'shockumentary' TAKING LIBERTIES, director Chris Atkins puts Tony Blair's New Labour government firmly in his crosshairs and takes aim.

Reviled over his handling of the 'War on Terror' and special relationship with U.S. President George W Bush, Blair's image took a very public battering from which it never fully recovered.

Much like Michael Moore sought to undermine the U.S. administration and make a fool out of the president with FARENHEIT 9/11, Atkins has constructed a similar argument using previously unseen footage intercutting with commentary from various talking heads such as Mark Thomas, Boris Johnson and Tony Benn as well as other leading politicians, celebrities, human rights organisations, academics and more.

The result is a revealing and entertaining look at the burning issues of the UK today.

Synopsis
With the 'shockumentary' TAKING LIBERTIES, director Chris Atkins puts Tony Blair's New Labour government firmly in his crosshairs and takes aim. Reviled over his handling of the 'War on Terror' and special relationship with U.S. President George W Bush, Blair's image took a very public battering from which it never fully recovered. Accused of everything from destroying civil liberties to using the media to create a climate of fear, Britain's former PM became the perfect scapegoat for frustrated liberals with an axe to grind and no real sense of the wider issues that influenced his policy-making. But just as 'Bush-bashing' has swept America, so too has 'Blair-baiting' become a fashionable pastime among the U.K. left. Much like Michael Moore sought to undermine the U.S. administration and make a fool out of the president with FARENHEIT 9/11, Atkins has constructed a similarly glib argument using a proven method of intercutting previously unseen footage with commentary from various talking heads--politicians, celebrities, human rights organisations, academics, and lawyers--and set it to the requisite pumping soundtrack (to attract the young vote). He also draws on isolated incidents of public injustice to strengthen his case, such as the teenage sisters who were detained for 36 hours for a peaceful protest. Taken out of context, these episodes form a persuasive argument, not to mention an alarming portrait of the British justice system. While TAKING LIBERTIES might be seen by some as pandering to public opinion, its heart is certainly in the right place, and if nothing else, it serves as a lesson in documentary filmmaking.

Customer Reviews

4 stars in The Guardian
Peter Bradshaw
Friday June 8, 2007
The Guardian

It may not tell us much that's new, but there's something exhilarating about this thoroughly enjoyable and worthwhile docu-blast against Tony Blair's insidious diminution of native British liberties. Director Chris Atkins shows how, since 1997, New Labour's residual passion for ideology, combined with a fear of looking Spartist or soft on terror, has combined to deliver a panic-stricken abandonment of liberties that we'd somehow held on to in the face of Nazi Germany and the IRA.

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Some pundits may find it deficient in sophistication or the fence-sitting neutrality of good taste; for me it was a vitamin-boost of scepticism. Cheerful, polemical and tactless, Atkins's film raises a celebratory glass to the spirit of British awkwardness and bloody-mindedness, the dissident spirit that infuses both the anti-war protesters and the Countryside Alliance - Mark Thomas and Boris Johnson alike. "What about Magna Carta?" demands Tony Hancock in a nicely chosen clip. "Did she die in vain?" In the strangest way, Hancock is the tutelary deity behind many of the English protesters here: very often elderly and apolitical souls who feel they have earned the right not to be bullied by the macho-menopausal apparatchiks of the Blair/Brown succession.
It is an old story. Mr Blair was once ferociously against ID cards, and now he loves them. He once regaled audiences with anecdotes, combined with bittersweet shrugs, to the effect that protesters yelled nasty things at him as he was driven into Westminster in his official car, but gosh, how wonderful to live in a country where folk are free to shout nasty things. Now he feels he can and will live without these protesters. He is an enthusiast for increasing detention without charge, for the vast internment camp at Guantánamo Bay. And this trained barrister is not straining his forensic and analytic abilities to investigate the mounting circumstantial evidence that extraordinary rendition flights are stopping off at Manchester and Prestwick.

September 11 was the key event - and yet the Anglo-American crackdown on radical Islamic terrorism is, in the oddest way, not the most powerful moment in the movie. That honour goes to the case of the NatWest Three: three British bankers accused of white-collar fraud by the American authorities and extradited there with no evidence presented to the British CPS. Our submission to US rule on 9/11 issues simply encouraged America to believe that its writ extends beyond its borders on any and every other issue.

Atkins captures pungent moments of low comedy. A police-protected bailiff is captured thrusting court orders at protesters with a jolly cry of "Served!" Later, a protester is shown trying to turn the tables, stuffing a revised court order into the hands of a policeman who is humiliated and angered beyond any rational measure by this casting-the-runes manoeuvre. He insists the man take the document back and threatens to nick him for littering.

It all makes for a shabby and abject story, a paradoxical tale of weakness from a political generation from which 10 years ago we expected such strength and self-belief. They are still in deep denial; we are waking up.

Taking Liberties
I saw this at the cinema and would urge all who value such rights as freedom of speech, habeus corpus, right to protest and privacy as fundamentals of British society to watch this film. Director Chris Atkins reveals how laws passed in recent years have eroded these and other rights, through the use of animation, personal testimonies and some informed commentary.
In spite of the subject matter, the film does not drag and entertains. And it is both reassuring and amusing to see the very ordinary, yet very special heroes in this film, standing up for our rights in the most British of ways. They are brave folk, but do nothing that the rest of us couldn't do too, if we could only get off our backsides..
This film will make you angry, sad, frustrated, and probably shock you - it means to. Its aim is to wake us all up, before it is too late, and all our liberties have been taken away.
Buy it, watch it, inflict in on all who know you - and then get them to do the same!
Incidentally, the excellent soundtrack is available on cd and a percentage goes to Amnesty.

4 Stars in The Times
The Times
June 7th
James Christopher

Chris Atkins's film Taking Liberties is a grainy piece of newsreel montage about the Labour Government's broken promises over civil liberties. It begins with a coach journey to an antiIraq War rally where the police arrest assorted pensioners for wearing masks. It ends with the same piece of footage nearly two hours later, after charting the Government's extraordinary knee-jerk reactions since "the War on Terror" was declared.

I came out of this eloquent mugging exhausted and in despair. It's a film that champions free speech by a director who once championed Blair. But the case is pure dynamite. Would the Tony Blair of 1995 defend the Tony Blair of 2007? The montage of evidence suggests that we have been living in a police state for almost ten years. Atkins documents the creeping grip of CCTV cameras and the blizzard of new laws that stifle simple freedoms. The film asks hard questions about the effect the Iraq War is having on personal privacy - and the answers are shocking.

What happens to our ancient democratic rights when we need them most? The portly figure of Boris Johnson looms large and sensible out of one short interview with some wonderful advice to Government about identity cards: "Just butt out of it."