A year with one platoon in the deadliest valley in Afghanistan.
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Title: Restrepo (2010)
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| Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
 |
The Men of Battle Company 2nd of the 503rd Infantry Regiment 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team | ... | Themselves |
| Juan 'Doc Restrepo | ... | Self (archive footage) | |
| Dan Kearney | ... | Self | |
| LaMonta Caldwell | ... | Self | |
| Aron Hijar | ... | Self | |
| Misha Pemble-Belkin | ... | Self | |
| Miguel Cortez | ... | Self | |
| Sterling Jones | ... | Self | |
| Brendan O'Byrne | ... | Self | |
| Joshua McDonough | ... | Self | |
| Kyle Steiner | ... | Self | |
| Angel Toves | ... | Self | |
| Mark Patterson | ... | Self | |
| Stephen Gillespie | ... | Self | |
| Marc Solowski | ... | Self | |
Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington's year dug in with the Second Platoon in one of Afghanistan's most strategically crucial valleys reveals extraordinary insight into the surreal combination of back breaking labor, deadly firefights, and camaraderie as the soldiers painfully push back the Taliban. Written by Sundance Film Festival
Recent (say in the last ten years) Fiction films about war, BLACK HAWK DOWN for example, have taken the same approach this films takes. The men are men doing a "job" and earn our respect on that level. The fact they do "the job" is what earns our respect. The fact that War isn't your usual job is not questioned, not by the filmmakers or by the men doing the job.
Part of the job is not to question the job and you don't do a lot of debating while you're either hiding or shooting to save your own life. That's more of a Hollywood idea of war than reality anyway it would seem.
This keeps the film from being political, so doesn't alienate people who are pro or con to the specific war the movie might be about.
So this fits into our modern war film approach comfortably on that level. Does it need more than a slice of life approach to be fascinating and tension filled? Not really, if it's done well enough and this film is very well done. The men interviewed talk about being disturbed but they way they talk is real, one guy who can't really sleep at all since actually smiles through his this part of his interview, hiding his horror behind telling something he finds embarrassing. This is so different than the "acted" stories of war we get in movies traditionally and such.
Could the film have let us know some history to the valley the men are stuck in or try to let us in tactically a little more from a distance. Probably could have, though bits of this are filled in by the troops as they are the new group in the area and some past mistakes haunt them and they repeat some of those same mistakes. War isn't really a clean job after all or a nice one.
The central battle has very little footage, obviously the cameramen were hiding for their lives so that section is a series of very very close up talking heads, the professionally detached talking heads of those involved and their armor does crack as they get into it, the little actual footage of the battle shows the real raw reactions.
This is making the best of a bad situation for the filmmakers, but it does rob us the horrid experience of the initial attack.
No enemy dead are shown at all in the film, only some collateral damage victims. This, it could be argued, is slanted a bit from the filmmakers point of view, or of course is just a limitation of their "embedded" status with their troops. Perhaps, the film suggests, they rarely see the enemy up close in this particular valley fight. Perhaps, but they aren't shown for whatever reason. Likewise there is scant footage of some of those U.S. troops who die when they are alive. This does also take away some emotional connection. And frankly when everyone wears the same uniform and has the same haircut it does get confusing at a few points as to who is who.
Some of the footage is very crudely recorded, shaky/grainy to a distracting degree--to be expected, but don't sit too close in the theater. It's edited and assembled very well, if there is/are movie tricks, and certainly there are, in terms of "faking" reaction shots or re-ordering events to make it more dramatic---it's seamlessly done. It all feels honest.
It's a very very good slice of life and puts you there with the men. And though very young they do mostly come off as men. That's all it does and it does it perfectly. There is no "ulimate" film on this war because, of course it's still going on. This film would seem to suggest that it's not going to end with us, "on top" but it doesn't say one way or the other. If you want to see our volunteer army in action in one specific area for one year, there hasn't been anything better previous to this film or in any of the Iraq movies, docu and fiction, done so far.