Tuesday, July 15, 2008
WAR MOVES
Today's film was
with the superb Ryan Phillipe as an Army non-com who is stop-lossed back to Iraq after an extremely traumatic tour.
We also have Channing Tatum and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as friends of Phillipe. Equally fucked up from the war.
This is not an anti-war movie per se. It accepts that the war is there. It is a human story of a man who is torn between loyalty to his unit and his men and his own revulsion at what this particular war has done to him and his charges. No war front. No discernible sides. Everyone has a weapon. Urban fighting. Civilians in the crossfire.
The war scenes that set the story up are stirring and quite disturbing. The director of this film, Kimberly Pierce (Boys Don't Cry) believes in showing rather than telling. The use of hand held and the videos of the troops themselves combine with great story telling power.
They are also the stuff of flashbacks that Phillipe and his men experience after they are back home, soon to be sent back to the war.
The film is very moving. I could see it again.
That makes it a 4 out of Netflix5.
