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| Herald Sun January 30, 1999 Return to Waco MELBOURNE'S Lumiere Cinemas are to be applauded for bringing back the superlative investigative documentary, Waco: The Rules of Engagement, for a return season after its all-too-brief Melbourne run late last year. If you didn't catch this incisive, damning expose the first time around, I cannot recommend highly enough that you make every effort possible to see it now, This film chronicles the tragic 51-day stand-off that took place between the FBI and David Koresh's Branch Davidian sect in early 1993. In the tradition of the best, most eloquently provocative documentaries, the version of events you will encounter will not be the one on the TV news six years ago. By the time the Waco farce had played itself out, more than 80 people had died. The first shocking insight from Waco is that of course, the whole situation should never have escalated to the point of needless carnage in the first place. Drawing from an astonishing archive of amateur video footage (much of it shot on FBI cameras and provided by the Branch Davidian legal defence team), director William Gazecki mounts his argument by proving that the Waco siege started out as nothing more than a publicity stunt for an under-funded US government agency. After the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms botched an initial raid on the Waco compound (in the space of two hours, four of its agents died. along with six Davidians), the FBI stepped in and accelerated the stand-off to the point of no return. In the tradition of the best, most eloquently provocative documentaries, the version of events you will encounter will not be the one on the TV news six years ago. The true power of Gazecki's inquisition comes to the fore when he meticulously dissects the FBI's covering of its own tracks in the years after the siege. The FBI claim that it never fired a single shot during the 51-day stand-off is instantly scuttled by infra-red footage of bullets zinging towards the Waco compound from a number of directions. Most disturbing of all is Gazeckl's contention that the FBI intentionally triggered the fire that sent so many Davidians to their deaths. The fact that the FBI deliberately pumped the most combustible form of tear gas available into the compound is in contradiction to the party line that the agency toes to this very day. The FBI still maintains that the Branch Davidians set their compound on fire as an act of mass suicide. Anybody who sees Waco will be shocked as to how tar from the truth such a despicable assertion could be. Across its 136 minutes, this Academy Award-nominated documentary is unflinching in its pursuit of the truth. It misses few of its targets, and, by the end, the film hints at a haunting moral paradox that could flare up again in America at any time. |
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