More than a victim of Isis thugs

Jim: The James Foley Story (15) Verdict: Moving documentary ★★★✩✩

JIM FOLEY was the U.S. journalist executed by Islamic State terrorists in August 2014.

This poignant documentary, made by a family friend, Brian Oakes, begins with a caption assuring us that it will not show us the ghastly video footage of the beheading with which Foley’s captors demonstrated their inhumanity.

But we do see Foley, above, in an orange robe, kneeling next to his masked executioner and reading IS propaganda from cue cards.

If there is anything laughable about such a horrible spectacle, it is the belief by Foley’s captors that anyone in the West might think he really meant the words he was compelled to spout. That picture of Foley — and others like it, such as that of the Liverpudlian engineer Ken Bigley — are still the most potent images of the moral depravity of which these people are capable.

The purpose of the film is to ensure that we don’t remember Foley as a kneeling man in the desert about to be murdered. Its aim is to help us to understand who Foley was and how he lived, before his death. He is recalled, lovingly, by family, journalistic colleagues and fellow hostages.

In a way, though, the filmmaker’s closeness to the Foley family is not especially helpful. The man presented to us is something of a paragon of decency, good cheer and compassion, not to mention all-American good looks, with a jawline, as one colleague points out, you could cut cheese with.

But it does mean that Foley’s kin are candid with their memories, and willing to express their enduring struggle to understand why Jim so wanted to leave his home in affluent New Hampshire to chronicle the horrors of civil war.

The answer is not just that he wanted to tell the world what was happening; he also needed the crazy adrenaline rush. War correspondents will understand that. For the rest of us, it takes a bit more explaining.