Review of ‘Three Days in Pakistan: The Eric Aude Story’ by Josh Lange, Talking Pictures co-Producer
For all the strengths of having a confident and trusting personality, perhaps the most dangerous drawback is that we sometimes do not truly know the people we let in close to us. As a young man, Hollywood stuntman and actor Eric Audé learned this lesson the hardest way possible, by becoming a personal trainer for and friend to a man who would end up betraying him in nightmarish fashion. It began with agreeing to international courier jobs the friend set up for him, which involved Audé personally bringing leather goods to Turkey to allow for his friend to avoid paying import taxes. After confirming with a trusted legal contact that he would not be arrested should anything go wrong with delivering the leather goods, and after enough good experiences, the gig became so worth the money, Audé recommended it to family and friends.
his prompted his own brother to agree to make the next trip set up by the friend, but instead of it being set it up for Turkey, a country Audé trusted to be safe for travel, this time the destination was Pakistan (circa 2002, when tensions with the Middle East reached a new high). When the brother refused to continue with the job once the new city was announced, the “friend” successfully pressured Audé to reluctantly make the trip instead. What he did not know, however, was the bag featured a hidden compartment containing an opium delivery. Once he was stopped at Pakistani customs by a drug-sniffing dog, the drug was discovered, and Audé was
It didn’t take long for this delusion to fade, for his interrogation began shortly, and Audé was beaten and tortured by waterboarding–an act, it should be noted, that violated the Geneva Convention even for soldiers at war, but whose legalization was being rushed to approval at the time by the United States during the newly-proclaimed “War on Terror.” Audé’s initial imprisonment and interrogation
After his interrogation, Audé was transferred to prison, where his first fight is surprisingly depicted through a somewhat experimental 3D animated sequence, not unlike something one might see on cable news. Family and friends recount their desperate search for solutions at the time with still-potent heartache. It would end up taking three years, tens of thousands of dollars, multiple lawyers, and eventually a fortuitous contact with the son of Pakistani president Perez Musharraf before Audé returned home as a free man, but not before using deadly force in self-defense against an assailant–an event whose details were truncated in the film to limit Audé’s self-incrimination.
‘Three Days in Pakistan: The Eric Aude Story’ involves many surprising twists and turns, and the events are still fresh enough in all the
On Friday September 28th, Gravitas Ventures will release the film at the Los Angeles Laemmie NOHO theater, with video-on-demand scheduled for October 2nd.
Watch the movie’s trailer here:
