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Written, produced and directed by first-time documentarian Charles Ferguson, a political scientist with a doctorate from MIT and experience at the Brookings Institution, "No End in Sight" packs the enraging cumulative punch of a "J'accuse," but its tone could hardly be more sober. As lucid as it is level-headed, the film has a clear thematic focus -- what went wrong in Iraq -- and it identifies the catastrophic turning points with steely precision and a wealth of context. The result, narrated in a grave monotone by Campbell Scott, is a catalog of horrors so absurd and relentless it verges on farce, or Greek tragedy.

-- LA Times Review


Remember the scene in "A Clockwork Orange" where Alex has his eyes clamped open and is forced to watch a movie? I imagine a similar experience for the architects of our catastrophe in Iraq. I would like them to see "No End in Sight," the story of how we were led into that war, and more than 3,000 American lives and hundreds of thousands of other lives were destroyed....

Although Bush and the war continue to sink in the polls, I know from some readers that they still support both. That is their right. And if they are so sure they are right, let more young men and women die or be maimed. I doubt if they will be willing to see this film, which further documents an administration playing its private war games. No, I am distinctly not comparing anyone to Hitler, but I cannot help being reminded of the stories of him in his Berlin bunker, moving nonexistent troops on a map, and issuing orders to dead generals.

-- Roger Ebert, Four Stars for "No End in Sight"


That said, prepare to be riveted: No End in Sight, Charles Ferguson's first film, is without question the most important movie you are likely to see this year. It is not a film that simply massages your pre-existing attitudes about the war in Iraq. Rather it is a work that tells you things you almost certainly did not know about that disaster or things that have been lost to sight as chaos, anarchy and our feelings of helplessness have grown over the years since the invasion of 2003. Specifically, what it says is that the war was lost by the "coalition" in its first month � when U.S. forces failed to protect the Iraqi museum and library, among 20 other invaluable cultural, social and political sites.

"Now we have no national heritage," a curator, standing in the ruins of his institution, says. This is bad enough, but the failure had dire and immediate political consequences as well. Televised images of the looters sent a message to the Iraqis that absent the imposition of martial law (which the U.S. had a right to declare under the Geneva Conventions) ordinary citizens had nowhere to turn for protection of their lives and property. Except to the Muslim militias. Here was a faith-based initiative with a new and deadly face. Meanwhile, back in Washington, Donald ("I don't do quagmires") Rumsfeld made his little jokes: who knew there were so many vases available for purloining in Iraq?

-- Time Magazine


It might be argued that since Mr. Bremer, Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. Wolfowitz declined to appear in the film, Mr. Ferguson was able to present only one side of the story. But the accumulated professional standing of the people he did interview, and their calm, detailed insistence on the facts, makes such an objection implausible. So too does the corroboration of the journalists who watched the story unfold and, perhaps most of all, the sense that anyone but the hardiest Bush loyalist will feel of having seen versions of this story before.

That feeling does not make �No End in Sight� dull or easy to watch. Quite the contrary. It�s a sober, revelatory and absolutely vital film.

-- New York Times


In one of the more telling moments in Charles Ferguson's bone-chilling new documentary, "No End in Sight," when a reporter offers "quagmire" as an apt description, Rumsfeld takes umbrage. With the debonair assurance of an old Hollywood star, he says, "That's somebody else's word. I don't do quagmires." Ferguson's film is a clear-sighted counterpoint to the former secretary of defense's impression. As the title suggests, it's a seemingly infinite mess.

A raft of documentaries have come along since the start of the war, some of them accusatory, some investigative, some empathetic, nearly all of them skeptical. None is better argued or more searing than "No End in Sight." It's soberly made, too. The lack of overt sensationalism doesn't leave us with a starchy piece of nonfiction. It has the seriousness of a "Frontline" piece (not to mention actual "Frontline" footage) without the testiness of a jeremiad. Ferguson surrounds himself with some excellent technicians who transform a rookie's impressive leap into journalism (the director is an Internet millionaire) into a damning political thriller.

-- Boston Globe


The script of Charles Ferguson's "No End in Sight" would certainly be in the hands of prosecutors in the event of impeachment hearings. The documentary is a furious, if quietly stated, indictment of the president and all his men in re the debacle that our adventure in Iraq has turned into. Ferguson builds a compelling case of bad judgment, error, stubbornness, arrogance, all of it adding up to a mess with no end in sight.

It's also, most impressively, an evocation of that horror. Astutely edited by Chad Beck and Cindy Lee, it assembles a depressing cascade of imagery from the war: the tanks pulling through the dusty, ancient towns; the young Americans scooting through the ruins in their Terminator shades; optics-festooned plastic rifles, looking for targets as the children and women flee; the detonation of a roadside bomb with its surreal combination of speed and energy; and, of course, the talking heads, who talk, then talk some more, then talk still more, that is, if they'll talk at all. (Wolfowitz, Bremer and Rumsfeld wouldn't; all are represented in archival footage.)

-- Washington Post


The distinguishing characteristics of "No End in Sight," one of the two or three indispensable documentaries yet made about the war and the only comprehensive one, have nothing to do with flash or cleverness. All writer and director Charles Ferguson has to offer is intelligence plus a measure of perspective, commodities in short supply when the Bush administration prepared, in its wobbly way, to alter history.

-- Chicago Tribune



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