Two down on their luck black-marketeers, Dagr and Kinza, have inherited
a very important prisoner: the former star torturer of Saddam's recently
collapsed Ba'athist regime, Captain Hamid, who promises them untold
riches if they smuggle him to Mosul. With the heat on, they enlist the
help of Private Hoffman, their partner in crime and a U.S. Marine, who
undertakes to help them escape the authorities. But getting out of
Baghdad is no easy task. The city is crawling with traps and alive with
5000 years of history. Soon they are embroiled in the search for a
serial killer and the mysteries of an ancient watch that doesn't tell
time. Hounded by religious fanatics, crazed librarians, alchemists,
special elements of the former Iraqi secret service, not to mention the
United States army, the odd foursome must survive long enough to
discover the truth. And in this place where life is constantly under
siege the truth may be, quite simply, the secret to eternal life. With a
satiric eye firmly cast on the absurdity of human violence, Escape from
Baghdad features more than a few shades of Heller's Catch-22 and David
O'Russell's Three Kings while doing something all-together shocking:
giving voice, ribald humor, and some epic firepower to people most often
referred to as "collateral damage."
