Restrepo Reviews

On Friday, Alma, Gunslinger and I (plus a couple others) went to see Restrepo. Alma and Gunslinger will update the post as soon as they get a chance. I hope Gulliver and MK will do the same as soon as they've seen it. Of course, if you've seen it, we hope you'll add your own comments and tell us what you thought.

UPDATE: I've added my thoughts and bumped this to the top. -Gulliver

Lil:
To be honest, I didn't know what to expect going in. We ended up sitting in the very front row (we didn't get there that late, the show was just sold out). Anyway, being so close made me a little queasy at first and then I got used to it. Overall, I thought it was interesting--though a little long. I've never served and I've never been to Afghanistan so I always think it's interesting to see what a place looks like (beautiful), the conditions that soldiers live in, and get a feel what it might have been like.

In terms of substance, I don't think that the film painted the soldiers and their officers in the most flattering light. The captain basically boasting at the beginning that he hadn't read anything to prepare because he didn't want to be tainted by what he might have read honestly seemed pretty stupid. I mean, if you can educate yourself in advance, why wouldn't you? Gunslinger has educated views on their performance/leadership under fire so I'll leave that analysis to him. I did find it shocking that the NCO so thoroughly lost it during the ambush.

I thought the film would have been easier to follow if the directors had picked fewer perspectives from which to tell the story. I also think it would have been interesting to provide a deeper point of view from fewer people. Thinking back on length, if the film intended to provide perspective on how tedious, long and repetitive deployments can be, then it succeeded. Overall though I thought it was interesting and definitely worth seeing.

Gulliver:
I finally went to see Restrepo on Tuesday after work in downtown DC. The film is showing at the E Street Cinema, I suppose now that it's gotten full distribution through alliance with National Geographic. I'd been trying to figure out a way to see it for weeks, but wasn't able to get a ticket for the only two showings in the national capital area, at the AFI Silver Theater documentary festival up in Silver Spring.

Having decided to go to that particular showing of the movie pretty last-minute, I'd forgotten having seen a notice on the Restrepo Facebook page that Sebastian Junger would be at the DC theater signing posters and books following the early-afternoon showing. When I walked into the lobby, there was a line of several dozen people waiting to meet the author of War. It was a little surprising -- though pleasantly so -- to see that the book and movie had generated so much interest.

As far as the actual film is concerned: I thought it was very good. Having said that, I'm very surprised to tell you that I felt like the book was more effective in conveying the sense that Junger intended, which is to say "what it feels like to be at war." Now of course a documentary film is going to largely be about documenting events, and the filmmaker is limited by what he's physically exposed to, camera in hand. (This is one of my complaints about the film, actually, though it's one that couldn't really be addressed: many of the most meaningful and significant events described in the book do not appear in the film, and many are not even referenced. This is, of course, a limitation of being just one or two dudes with one camera, and you can't be there for everything.)

My big takeaway, however trite it sounds, is just that these guys are so freaking young. I say this as someone who frequently interacts with soldiers and Marines, who is well aware of the demographic data of the force, who reads casualty announcements marking the deaths of very young men, and who knows intellectually that a whole bunch of specialists and lance corporals are 19 or 20 years old... these guys are so freaking young.

I'm not in a position to critique the behavior of the soldiers featured in the film or the leadership of their officers, not only because I'm not a subject matter expert in combat leadership, but also because a filmmaker necessarily makes decisions about what to put in and what to leave out, and I don't think it's fair to assess performance without real, sustained exposure to actual events. (I know it's a novel idea: don't make judgments without all the info.) I've seen several complaints about CPT Kearney's opening interview in the film, where he admits to not having studied up on the Korengal before deployment so as to see the AO with fresh eyes. He's also been criticized for the way he spoke to local elders about his predecessor during several shuras, expressing a sort of "new sherrif in town, we're not operating like those old jerkoffs" kind of attitude. Even on this I think we should reserve judgment: it may not make friends in the Army, but if this guy's professional judgment is that the best way to win the support of the elders is to throw the previous unit under the bus, then hey, we're all adults here. (It may be worth reminding people that when GEN Mattis was prepping his Marines for their deployment to Anbar Province in late 2003, he seriously considered having them wear green woodland camo and black combat boots so as to differentiate themselves from the DCU- and desert boots-clad soldiers of the 82nd, who were the prior ground-holders. He only relented when the 82nd's CG personally expressed his sense that this was a personal affront.)

So in summary, good film. Great opportunity to give your average viewer who doesn't think too much about Afghanistan a sense of what it's like to sit in a remote, isolated base and get shot at for 15 months. Had I not read the book previously, I would certainly say that this is the best movie I'd seen all year. It's only my very slight disappointment at the mismatch between written word and moving picture that keeps me from giving Restrepo a full 5/5.