Restrepo

The film follows a platoon of US soldiers building an outpost in the Korengal Valley of Afghanistan. Cinema verite-style, we see them shoot at the Taliban, search a home, interrogate individuals, meet with village elders, enjoy leisure time and get killed. There are also some interviews with surviving soldiers later. My impression of the war from this film is that if this is the way we are fighting terrorism, it has got to be the slowest and costliest way to do it. One soldier dies on camera (or rather, he is caught on camera right afterward). The reaction to this is poignant. Even more depressing is a scene in which the soldiers visit a home after a US helicopter has dropped a bomb on it. We see a dead child and several injured people. The soldiers don't seem to be particularly upset, although their captain expresses regret and anxiety in a later interview. In several meetings with villagers, soldiers seem brusque while listening to complaints ranging from a request for money for a villager's cow the soldiers apparently ate and the number of innocent civilians killed by a previous platoon. I began to think that public relations skills must not be part of the training at West Point. And this was when they were being filmed--what is it like when the camera isn't there? The captain talks about how the villagers will get a road and jobs, as if this is more important than someone's child who was killed. I wondered as I watched the film how many of the soldiers portrayed understand how the India-Pakistan conflict over Kashmir, or the U.S.'s support for Israel's war against the Palestinians, or the US's support of the dictatorships of Egypt and Saudi Arabia led to Sept. 11 and created the conditions that led to their being in Afghanistan and their comrades getting killed. If any of them find out this information, my guess is they might be very, very angry. The interviews help us learn more about some of the individual soldiers, but not much. Some have been deeply affected by their experience, but it isn't clear if they learned much from it. Overall, the film is touching and at times riveting, but also frustrating.

don't get me wrong...the American soldiers did their soldiering well...the reality of what happens in the field was fantastic...interestingly, the movie dispels any illusions of high tech capability/applicability in the conditions of the valley...they sure did a lot of shooting without hitting anything...OK, it was covering fire more interestingly, there was a total disconnect between the military and the villagers...a lack of respect, sensitivity and cultural understanding...you just don't speak like the soldiers did to the elders - zero respect with a we-tell-you attitude...and the soldiers didn't get point about the cow - we'll give you its weight in rice - you've got to be kidding? ... and they "knew" it was the elders' sons who were shooting at them...so like, shooting back will win hearts and minds? oh yes, the 'end' goal was to put a road in...i really wonder whether anyone local wanted it but give the US soldiers their due...they stuck it out and did what they were ordered.

This is where documentary filmmaking becomes serious. Whatever you are expecting out of this film, chances are you will get a whole lot more. Restrepo follows a platoon of soldiers in Afghanistan who are defending a valley, Korgengal. It is said to be one of the most dangerous valleys in the entire country and these brave men take fire every single day of their brutal campaign. This is a riveting film and it is one of those that you cannot shake. It gives you a glance into the absolute darkest depths of modern warfare and just how demanding the fighting is both physically and mentally. It is a film that gives you a rare look into the horrors of war. And it is absolutely astounding. Restrepo is shot at a very personal level. The camera never intrudes on the soldiers during their work, and thank God considering some of the harrowing things they go through in this movie. This film hardly even feels like a documentary in the sense of what we think of documentary today. It is filled with interviews, but the bulk of the movie is truly documenting the lives of these soldiers. We get to see all sides of the emotional spectrum that can be afflicted through trauma. We get to look at how different people cope with such horrors as are experienced in this film. And it is all through such respectful eyes. I never once thought, 'Wow, they should really stop filming this.' Every moment of the film feels so important and the fact that all this was so clearly and eloquently caught on camera is astounding. The unequivocally greatest thing about this film is the fact that it has absolutely no political agenda. It really has no alternative motive other than telling the story of these incredibly brave soldiers. The film only seeks to honor the brave men who served our country in the most dangerous area imaginable. This film isn't for the political leaders responsible for the war. It isn't for the military commanders that send these soldiers into battle. This movie is for the soldiers themselves. It is a true soldier's film in every sense. It has a very stern focus on the individual. It makes such an important point out of this aspect that it could have possibly gone even further. There are a lot of men in this platoon and thus we don't get to know any one person particularly well. We get to know the platoon well as a whole and how each man interacts with his fellow soldiers and how they all deal with loss and tragedy. Each individual soldier in this movie is important and the movie strives to show how meaningful that is. It is a remarkably important aspect of the film. You won't see many documentaries like this, and there's probably a good reason for this. The kind of footage captured in Restrepo isn't easy to get and you have to be just as brave as the soldiers themselves if you are to accompany them into battle to document their bravery. But thankfully when the opportunity to get such unforgettable footage arose, it was all put together extremely well. This is not an easy film to watch, but in the end it is so remarkably worth it.

It's inarguable that we need to support up the soldiers in Afghanistan. It's the cliché in political speeches, but this film shows that this is more than just a saying when given a human face and context. Restrepo doesn't try and bluntly make the case that the conflict there that the US is engaged in is really worth it, or that we should leave immediately. The filmmakers let the soldiers speak for themselves, and the situation tells much more about what's really going on there. The ground troop that makes Restrepo- named after a much beloved fallen man that died suddenly during a small attack- which is a fort on a hill overlooking the valley, are all mostly kids who are in the army for one reason or another (one of them, who gives the most background, came from a hippie-family), and they are where they are and got to buck up with the situation for the months into the year it goes on till they are relieved. We see some of the action, but if you're looking for the traditional war film please look elsewhere. This doesn't share the intensity of, say, last year's The Hurt Locker, but the film isn't on the same wavelength stylistically. Junger and Hetherington want these faces of the soldiers, and their experiences, to tell more than the visceral shocks that are shown on screen. Point in fact, there isn't a whole lot of action on screen, either because, logically, it would be difficult for the already in-grave-danger cameraman to get it on film (most of all that Rocky Mountain Ridge episode that everyone's haunted by), or that the US Army wouldn't allow it to be shown in the film. It's here, in having the lack of what we expect to see in a war film, that it gathers its strength and resonance. The film Restrepo is engaging and absorbing as a collection of moments and scenes, detailing what everyday life was like there, and sometimes it could be just plain dull, or on the 'downlow' as it were. We see the dealings the army tries to make with the locals, who are either too scared of the Taliban (one gets the sense they're like a mafia with bigger guns) or don't want to help since, frankly, the US ends up killing a few civilians here and there, many of whom have never seen US troops before. Or, on the flipside, those that do want to deal with the soldiers after a cow is caught in the outlying fence on the perimeter and is killed, which is valuable property to the natives. And we also get to see how these guys, mostly kids in their early 20's or younger, having some relaxing time when not being fired at or firing back. To be sure, some sequences are intense, such as the Rocky Mountain Ridge tale which has the soldiers being interviewed still unable to handle with the casualties and how they were surrounded by the Afghan forces. But what one walks away from this film, shot in the Korangal with straightforward, sobering shots of soldiers doing what they do, and with telling interviews shot much later when they were in Italy, is how they weathered the chaos and did accomplish something there with the fort (albeit later abandoned altogether in April 2010). It's extraordinary to see it so up close, and to put the human face on it. The audience, however they feel about the conflict currently (from the looks of things Obama's keeping soldiers there for longer stretches until "it" is "won"), get a fresh perspective and can walk away with their own conclusions. That, and those haunted faces of the soldiers themselves, who in profile have that stare in their eyes, sometimes more-so than others depending on when talking about what, and knowing that look may be there for the rest of their lives.

It's a strange way to fight, without ever seeing the people you're shooting at and who are shooting at you. The strongest aspect about this viewpoint documentary is its lack of an opinionated narration. The filmmakers--who deserve commendations of their own for putting themselves in the line of fire for 15 months--let the soldiers and their activities tell the story, the firefights, patrols, attempts to communicate with the Afghans, mundane chores. And they let the viewer judge for meaning. It isn't possible, however, to truly capture a year and three months in 90 minutes. I did find it curious that so much interview footage was cut. If you see it on DVD, don't miss the interviews shown under special features. Perhaps the director-cameramen wanted to keep the ratio heavier on footage than interviews. In one omitted interview, the unit Captain admits that he thought he was responsible for losing even one soldier. He also mentions that one of those killed was the unit Sergeant Major's son. There should have been some way to weave this into the story. Another soldier says he hates the terms "you did what you had to do" because he doesn't think he really had to do it. Says he doesn't think God will greet him with a playful punch to the shoulder and say "you did what you had to do." It's powerful stuff, the included and the omitted footage. For the most part we fight now with volunteers. The mix of soldiers is a bit different than it was when there was a draft, but "Restrepo" shows that American forces still bring a wide range of backgrounds and reactions. And it shows that most are still so young that we are still sending kids to do the jobs old men ask them to do. They are brave, fearful, obscene, committed for the wrong reasons, committed for right reasons, and committed for no reason at all. It's a powerful view.

I actually thought that this will be an objective movie about the war in Afganistan, but it turned out to be just another documentary that glorifies American stupid wars. In the end of the film there is a note that 50 American soldiers died in this valley - I wonder how many local people they killed while they were there. I bet a lot more. And, what is the most stupid is that after all this, they retreated from the valley so even their money driven goal was not achieved. I'm afraid that this will turn out to be the scenario for the whole war in Afganistan - politicians and big companies made a lot of money, a lot of innocent of people killed and all for "protecting the land of the free and fake democracy"!

The problem I had with this "movie," is that it was not much of a movie at all. It seemed like two guys decided they were going to embed and then make a movie about their experiences, whether there were any experiences to really show. We see a lot of forced shots where the soldiers really have nothing to say. It is as if they feel compelled to give the directors something, so they just start performing. I am very interested in this conflict and the men that fight it, but this documentary was inferior to stuff I have already seen on National Geographic and other news stations. In the end, it is rather dull. We are instead party to a number of young men trying to come up with something entertaining for the directors, as if their mission was secondary.

Filmmakers Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger take their cameras into the trenches for a "day in the life" look at what it's like to fight in the Korengal Valley, Afghanistan, nicknamed the most dangerous place on earth. There, a platoon of battle-weary men fight the Taliban, an elusive spectre of an enemy that they rarely actually see. They seem to have little interest in what they're doing or why they're doing it; they only come alive immediately after a fire-fight (of which they have at least 3 or 4 a day), when the adrenaline of battle gives them a natural high. The rest of the time they spend going about their more mundane duties, feeling at all times like fish in a barrel. Late into the film, one of their men is killed in a battle that pretty much all of them agree was one of their worst moments during the whole period. Other men had been killed, but this seems to be one of the first that the men actually see die before their eyes. It has a devastating effect -- they collapse into sobs and turn instantly from fighting men into small boys, and our hearts go out to them with compassion and the frustrated regret that they have to live like this while the rest of us go about our cushy existence. "Restrepo" confirms what a lot of fictional accounts of the War on Terror (or whatever it is we're calling it now) have suggested: the feelings of determination and vengeance that got us into all of these messy military conflicts have long since given way to depressed resignation. No one is really sure what we're doing anymore, these soldiers least of all, and watching "Restrepo" didn't feel much different from watching a documentary about Vietnam. Grade: A

Normally, I don't rate or rank documentaries with regular films but I'm going to make an exception in this case. This is a well structured and powerful film delivering incredible insight and feeling about the ground war in Afghanistan. There's no political agenda at all. What the film does deliver is the actual feeling of being deployed with these incredibly brave and heroic soldiers. You can feel the frustration, heartache and fear they experience right through the camera. We know the harshness of war and have seen the terrain they have to deal with on the news but it's tough to comprehend how difficult a task they face until you've seen it documented in this manner. They are more noble and tolerant then I would be in their situation. Civilian Afghan casualties would be my very last concern if I were in their shoes. Anyway, one line stood out for me and that was delivered by a soldier that was talking about the recent memory of losing a friend in battle. He said, "I don't want to forget because it makes me appreciate what I have." We can all take a cue from that quote. We should never forget what these guys are doing for us and appreciate life and the freedoms they and others like them have earned for us all.

The film follows a platoon of US soldiers building an outpost in the Korengal Valley of Afghanistan. Cinema verite-style, we see them shoot at the Taliban, search a home, interrogate individuals, meet with village elders, enjoy leisure time and get killed. There are also some interviews with surviving soldiers later. My impression of the war from this film is that if this is the way we are fighting terrorism, it has got to be the slowest and costliest way to do it. One soldier dies on camera (or rather, he is caught on camera right afterward). The reaction to this is poignant. Even more depressing is a scene in which the soldiers visit a home after a US helicopter has dropped a bomb on it. We see a dead child and several injured people. The soldiers don't seem to be particularly upset, although their captain expresses regret and anxiety in a later interview. In several meetings with villagers, soldiers seem brusque while listening to complaints ranging from a request for money for a villager's cow the soldiers apparently ate and the number of innocent civilians killed by a previous platoon. I began to think that public relations skills must not be part of the training at West Point. And this was when they were being filmed--what is it like when the camera isn't there? The captain talks about how the villagers will get a road and jobs, as if this is more important than someone's child who was killed. I wondered as I watched the film how many of the soldiers portrayed understand how the India-Pakistan conflict over Kashmir, or the U.S.'s support for Israel's war against the Palestinians, or the US's support of the dictatorships of Egypt and Saudi Arabia led to Sept. 11 and created the conditions that led to their being in Afghanistan and their comrades getting killed. If any of them find out this information, my guess is they might be very, very angry. The interviews help us learn more about some of the individual soldiers, but not much. Some have been deeply affected by their experience, but it isn't clear if they learned much from it. Overall, the film is touching and at times riveting, but also frustrating.