Review: Loose Change 2nd Edition (2006)

Directed by Dylan Avery
Written, produced, and edited by Dylan Avery, Jason Bermas, and Korey Rowe
Distributed by Louder Than Words
Runtime: 82 minutes

The events on 9/11 are a difficult subject to approach. With the debate between what really happened on that day being muddied by extremists on both sides, coupled with the enormous scope of the investigation, wading through the mountains of evidence and misinformation can feel like a lesson in mass confusion. So concealed by the fog of passing time, fleeting memory, and the often overwhelming nature of our Internet and information based society, the truth, it seems, has been lost to our divisive, post-9/11 world.

I'm not an expert when it comes to political sciences. I don't know squat about thermodynamics, physics, or even basic architecture. No, what I do is watch movies--be they entertaining or educational. Most recently, I watched director Dylan Avery's documentary film, Loose Change 2nd Edition.

I struggled for a while deciding on how best I should review this movie. Who am I, an admitted novice with only a casual interest in conspiracy theory, to judge the merits of this highly controversial and disputed documentary? Ultimately, I chose to review it the only way that I could: through the eyes of a skeptical American eager to gain a better understanding of the world around him. I think when it comes down to it, it is this demographic that the film is aimed towards anyway. So with my salt grains at the ready, I delved into the world of Loose Change...

At nearly and hour and a half long, I was expecting to get hit by a barrage of dates, names, eyewitness reports, and video analysis. Even so, I was nowhere near prepared for the relentlessness of this movie's pacing. In the first few introductory minutes alone, narrator Dylan Avery goes through enough prior knowledge and government-sponsored terrorism documents and news articles to make my head spin. He covers everything from the declassified Operation Northwoods papers to the technical specs on Boeing aircraft and their remote piloting capabilities. Also of note in these scenes, the many strange coincidences regarding military drills and training programs that took place on that day are discussed. Eerily similar to the London subway bombings that would follow a few years later, it seems highly suspect that in the months leading up to it and on the exact day itself, the Pentagon, along with other government and military agencies, was planning for just such an attack.

Right off the bat, I think Loose Change does a good job in at least putting some cracks in the foundation of the credibility and believability of the official 9/11 conclusions. If those in the United States government have conspired to conduct false-flag operations with the goal of furthering international agendas in the past, why should we trust that it will never happen again?

From here, Loose Change moves into the thick of the attack on the Pentagon. Of all the discrepancies on that fateful day, the most damaging, in my mind, to the official investigation have to do with the evidence regarding the Pentagon. Avery does an admirable job in this segment detailing the hard physics of aviation and in analyzing photographic evidence. Again, although I can't in any way verify that the data is legitimate, taken at face value, the 3D computer renderings used to graphically document the plane's path into the structure are highly convincing and used to great effect. To be able to visualize a super-imposed aircraft over photographs of the Pentagon's damage speaks louder than any flight instructor giving testimony as to the competency of the alleged hijacker's piloting skills. Photographic comparisons between the Pentagon crash site and those of other plane crashes in the past were also quite telling. As a whole, it was this evidence that I retained most vividly at the end of the film. Definitely a high-point for me.

Next, the movie goes on to cover the destruction of the World Trade Center and, more briefly, the crash of Flight 93.

During this segment, Avery walks a fine line between factual investigation and downright speculation. On the one hand, the multitude of first-hand eyewitness testimony by everyone from a janitor inside one of the towers to NYC firefighters, he makes a good case for the theory of multiple explosions and a possible controlled demolition. Moreover, video evidence showing smaller plumes of smoke well ahead of the collapsing towers does give credence to the idea the there were explosives planted in the buildings. However, as the adage goes, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence--and frankly, I just don't feel there was enough presented to close the case on the subject. There are oddities, to be sure, but a smoking gun there isn't. And quite unfortunately, the most likely candidate for such a smoking gun, the collapse of WTC building 7, receives comparatively little coverage.

Then Loose Change kind of lost me. As updated from the first edition of the film, the Flight 93 scenes focused less on the confusion regarding possible shoot-down orders and more on the outlandish (and nearly impossible to prove) theory that 93 wasn't brought down, but was in fact diverted to an airport in Ohio and had its passengers removed (of whose fate even Avery admits we will never know). He also goes on to claim that perhaps the cell phone calls from those on the plane--the major piece of evidence that disputes his above theories--were perhaps faked using voice-duplication software that has been recently developed by the DOD.

To borrow a phrase, this stuff is the real turd in the punchbowl when it comes to getting credibility for these theories. The video analysis? Great job. The eyewitness and expert testimony? Very convincing. But why Avery felt the need to piece such speculative theories together into an entirely improvable and highly unbelievable scenario is beyond me. Likewise, a scene from FOXNews' Hannity and Colmes program, in which the hosts interview controversial college professor Kevin Barrett, seemed completely unnecessary and served only to show the arrogance and extreme nature of certain 9/11 truth movement members.

In the ending credits sequence, Avery asks all of his viewers to find their own evidence and to come to their own conclusions. He is careful to say that the evidence he reports and the theories presented in Loose Change are the outcome of his own investigation--and that we would do good to not believe him at face value. I think therein lies the true success of Loose Change. It's not so much that this movie proves anything beyond a shadow of a doubt, but, some of the more extreme theories aside, it absolutely presents a convincing array of evidence. Evidence that, at the very least, brings doubt to the official government report. I applaud Avery and crew for having the courage to put their necks on the line to make this film and get this info out to the public. And I strongly hope that the attention it is receiving will help bolster this worthwhile and necessary debate.

Ratings:

Information: 9
Editing: 8
Audio/Video: 9

Overall (not an average): 9.0

~Khyron, 2007