The Road to Guantanamo is a riveting watch that should pile fuel onto an already flaming controversy. However, a problem arises if one steps back to assess this Michael Winterbottom-Mat Whitecross work as film apart from the controversy it seeks to raise. This is not so much that reaction will depend on the viewer’s prior political convictions, or even on the depth of his or her concern for human rights. Rather, whatever one’s opinions, and reiterating that this is an emotionally charged screen experience, the nub is that this “true story” will impress many -- is calculated to do so -- as a documentary record, whereas it is in fact acted re-creation carried along too often by the real victims’ headshot narration and some minimal archival footage in carefully selected ironic and overview TV news clips.

Think back to even more powerful, one-hundred-percent dramatized (by Oliver Stone) Midnight Express, a not fully faithful rendition of a not entirely true story which also simplified into good innocents versus bad hypocrites who torture, rape and do not seek out higher-up drug traffickers. In contrast, and while in no way looking to defend the indefensible, Alex Gibney’s Sundance Channel and Court TV The Human Behavior Experiments relates present abuses to three unnerving “scientific” experiments of the 1960s and ‘70s in order to hint at the potential for depravity in men big and small, while on NPR Gibney commented on the complexity of torture and its “layers of blame” extending from small to big.

President Bush opens the film in a speech later repeated, with “the only thing I know for certain is that these are bad people,” and the English “part documentary” reverses the designees in chronicling the twenty-eight-month nightmare of three first-generation Muslim British nationals (the fate of a fourth, disappeared early on, is unknown). Eventually celebrated as the Tipton Three, from their Midlands residence, their terror began innocuously in late 2001, when Asif Iqbal (Arfan Usman) traveled to a northern Pakistan Punjabi town to be introduced to and marry the girl his mother had chosen.

The intended best man suddenly unable to attend from England, another friend, Ruhel Ahmed (Farhad Harun), flies out as replacement, accompanied by Monir Ali (Waqar Siddiqui) and, anxious to revisit his native land after thirteen years, Shafiq Rasul (Riz Ahmed). Joined by cousin Zahid (Shahid Iqbal), the five meet in Karachi for a last-days-of-bachelorhood tour and stay at a mosque to avoid hotel expenses.

A prayer leader’s call for aid volunteers to Afghanistan appeals to their youthful idealism and desire for experience, but the overland trip to Kandahar and then Kabul does not go smoothly. There are language difficulties, Asif is running a high fever, and the first American bombs start to rain down. Intentionally grainy camerawork -- which many will take for real -- nicely re-creates the general confusion as, feeling useless and increasingly nervous, they try to return across the border but instead are carried north into Taliban mountain retreats.

Granted theoretical safe passage as non-citizens, they head south again, minus Monir, are caught in more bombing raids, rounded up by the brutish Afghani Northern Alliance, visited by deceived Red Cross observers and, consciously ignored by British embassy officials, finally handed over to American forces. Kept at an air base, they are separated -- later reunited -- then flown to Guantánamo, Camp X-Ray and, some time afterwards, Camp Delta.

Denied legal counsel, hearings or trials, and basic necessities, interrogated, degraded, browbeaten, cajoled, intimidated, bullied, lied to, they hear threats against their families and are assaulted physically and emotionally by people who appear to enjoy the job -- ordinary soldiers (one of whom is female), CIA, a redheaded man claiming to be Irish and another from the U.K.’s MI5 (whom end-titles say was really a disguised U.S. military officer), and officials from Washington.

Even the most naïve cannot believe that such practices are limited to one side only, just as surely as the staunchest patriot hawk cannot in any way defend them. The film’s propaganda rush does not let up, and although there are stretches like one caged praying prisoner’s mint-condition Koran defiled only after at least a year has passed, and although the violence is appreciably less bright-gore than in much current fare, the viewer is appalled at what he sees -- which is the purpose. The three young men find inner strength and solidarity and, wonder of wonders, when finally released without any charges having been pressed, are astoundingly composed and not filled with hatred when they close the film.

(Released by Roadside Attractions and rated “R” for language and disturbing violent content.)