'Report' star and Marine veteran Adam Driver is here to remind us the U.S. military condemns torture
The complex and compelling new drama The Report tells the true-life story of U.S. Senate staffer Daniel Jones, who worked tirelessly over a span of several years to produce a 6,700-page document exposing the CIA's systematic use of torture on terrorism suspects held by the U.S. in the aftermath of 9/11.
It's relevant terrain for Adam Driver (Star Wars, BlacKkKlansman), who stars as Jones, to explore. Driver enrolled in the United States Marine Corps shortly after 9/11 — years before he launched an Oscar-nominated acting career.
And while scandals like the highly publicized incidents at Abu Ghraib may have clouded the public's perception of the military's stance on torture, Driver is here to remind us that the armed forces largely condemn the approach of the Bush-Cheney administration and its intelligence agencies took in its use of "enhanced interrogation techniques."
"You're not going to find a group of people who are more against torture than the military, even just as an effective way of getting information," Driver told Yahoo Entertainment while promiting The Report (watch above).
"That's not my opinion, that's a documented [fact]," referencing that in 2017 as many as 109 retired U.S. generals and admirals (unsuccessfully) urged lawmakers to reject President Donald Trump's nomination for CIA director, Gina Haspel, for her role in the agency's use of torture at a Thailand black site in 2002.
As the film testifies, not only was the U.S.'s use of torture unethical and dangerous, it was indeed ineffective, and cost the country hundreds of millions of dollars.
"The military really informed my point of view on this because I spoke to military interrogators," explained writer-director Scott Z. Burns.
"The military is 100 percent against the techniques that the CIA uses. And people need to understand that. It wasn't them that started this. This came out of the CIA. And we have a long history, as the film states — going back to George Washington — where this is not who we are."
The Report is now theaters.
Watch Adam Driver, Annette Bening and Jon Hamm talk about the importance of the film's subject matter:
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