The 2004 smash-hit documentary Super Size Me introduced the world to filmmaker Morgan Spurlock. Spurlock's latest foray into documentary filmmaking, Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?, targets a far bigger foe than obesity. His quest for one of the most hated men on Earth starts when the soon-to-be father sets out to create a safer world for his unborn son. But instead of drafting a will or purchasing a comprehensive health insurance plan, Spurlock embarks on a search for America's most wanted fugitive, Osama bin Laden.
Spurlock combines ingenuity and hilarity to set his film apart from the panacea of other post 9/11-themed docudramas. With his wife only months shy of giving birth to the couple's first child and the premise to his movie firmly in place, Spurlock begins a whirlwind tour of the Middle East. Egypt, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Pakistan - Spurlock leaves no sandstone rock unturned in search of bin Laden. From Islamist zealots to the commoners of war-ravaged Palestine, Spurlock interviews everyone and anyone.
But instead of harping on American policy or actually trying to catch bin Laden, Where in the World aims to accomplish a far grander goal of trying to understand what makes the world so unsafe. In search of the reasons that compel young men to enlist as suicide bombers, Spurlock enters the same impoverished areas from which Al Qaeda recruits; he discovers that poverty is a driving force that galvanizes suicide bombers.
But Spurlock's best illustration of war's purposelessness occurs at a U.S. military base along the Afghani-Pakistani border. The montage of a giddy Spurlock firing everything from M-16s to rocket-launchers initially seems extraneous and distasteful, but therein lies its beauty. Somewhere between images of bullets ripping targets and a mountainside set ablaze by rocket explosion, Spurlock conveys his message - not a new one by any means, but one that seems to have been lost on America's politicians and populace alike: Regardless of religion we all want to make the world a safer place for our children, a goal that can only be achieved through mutual understanding and not war or the capture of Osama bin Laden. So while Spurlock's hunt for bin Laden was a failure, his film is a resounding success.
