‘The Dissident’: Jamal Khashoggi Exposé Edited Like A Geo-Trotting Thriller [Capsule]

The story of slain Washington Post reporter Jamal Khashoggi was erratically reported by the media back in 2018, so much so that one does wonder what fresh new territory Oscar-winning director Bryan Fogel (“Icarus”) could possibly tackle in his Khashoggi doc, “The Dissident.” As it turns out, quite a bit. Of course, for those who may have lived under a rock at the time, Fogel needs to remind us what happened. If you remember, 60-year-old Saudi-born journalist/dissident Khashoggi, an enemy of the Saudi Prince, entered the Saudi consulate in Turkey only to never come back out. The evidence gathered over the next weeks and months pointed to a plot concocted by the Saudi state to ambush Khashoggi, kill him, and then dismember his body, for it to never be found again. At least that’s what the Turkish transcripts of the incident described. Fogel doesn’t necessarily tell his story in any sort of inventive ways, and it also, at times, feels like he’s repeating himself by re-mentioning crucial events, as if the viewer couldn’t get around to them the first time they were tackled. Also, the decision to use former CIA director John Brennan in the film, as a talking head interviewee, feels wrong, as his tenure as director from 2013-2016 was filled with blatant corruption and biased politicizing. Regardless, this is nothing short of a compulsively watchable doc, meant to be shot as a geopolitical thriller, that needs to exist so as to expose the cover-up, on both the Saudi and American sides.

Score: B

“The Dissident” arrives in select theaters on December 25 and on VOD on January 8.