Against the Innocent

• 1989
• 1 hr 16 mins

• Watchlist

In this docudrama, the menace posed by Australian efforts to ward off terrorist attacks is shown to be at least as great as that posed by the attacks themselves. The story is told by a female German sociologist exploring the expanding power of the state, and her didactic commentary is interspersed with scenes of a hostage situation. Throughout, heavy-handed police responses to the situations they encounter, whether terrorist or not, make everyone look bad. In fact, the police soon deport the German academic as an undesirable. The filmmakers contentions seems to be that Australia is very virtually a police state already. However, the very fact of the film's being made and widely released within the country would seem to contradict that assertion, despite many well-documented abuses by the authorities.