Erasing David

Starring: David Bond
Directed by: David Bond, Melinda McDougall
Genre: Documentary
Runtime: 1 hour 20 minutes

If you consider yourself to be a paranoid person, than it might be best to stay clear of David Bond’s feature length documentary, or risk inflaming your paranoia to the point of hysteria. Erasing David is a fascinating, and often chilling, exploration into how much personal information is stored in government and corporate databases. But also how easily this information can be misconstrued to the detriment of the individual, or even more frightening, used to hunt you down.

Following the arrival of a letter informing him that his daughter Ivy is among 25 million residents whose details have been lost by the government, David Bond decides to leave his family behind for one month in an attempt to achieve total anonymity. On his tail are two private investigators that will use whatever means to track him down before the end of the thirty days. Bond hopes that by disappearing he will be able to prove the extent of surveillance that is now an unconscious part of everyday life for the average British citizen.

David Bond is a likeable everyman and makes an appealing protagonist to the piece. I only wish that the chase across Britain and Europe, which provides much of the dramatic narrative to the documentary, was as enthralling as some of the discoveries he makes in his investigations. We learn about information collated by Internet providers, victims of faulty criminal databases, surveillance cameras and new measures taken by schools to register pupils by their fingerprints. All of which makes for riveting viewing that is undermined by a rather sorry excuse for a manhunt.

Bourne Supremacy this is not. At times it feels a little condescending (and laughable) watching professional detectives searching through bin bags and glancing at Facebook pictures in order to piece together Bond’s life. It does exemplify the infringement of privacy that we all face on a mundane level, but is contradicted by the melodramatic tone of the chase.

All in all Erasing David does make compelling viewing when you consider the evidence that Bond uncovers. It’s often humorous and terrifying. Just don’t expect much from the hunt.

3/5