Restrepo

Year: 2010

Grade: B+

Country: USA

Director: Hetherington/Junger

Review

i’ve seen my fair share of iraq/afghanistan documentaries as well as other war documentaries. at their core they’re all basically the same, not that that’s a bad thing. this one uses mostly imbedded footage which is generally much better than a frontline style documentary which mostly leans on interviews and stock footage. as good as frontline is, the actual footage of guys in the middle of a fire fight is much more illuminating than an interview after the fact. if you’ve seen a lot of these kinds of films i’d probably still recommend this one because it’s in the upper echelon of war documentaries. if you haven’t seen many (or any) of these then this is as good a place to start as any.

now for some high horse talk: if you voted for bush or obama and you don’t have a family member in the army or you don’t talk with soldiers or you don’t watch these films then you really are an asshole. these kids volunteer for the service to help protect the country and we send them over there to fight bullshit wars that last too long to be painless and don’t last enough to actually accomplish anything. they medicate themselves with anti-depressants, they’re constantly on edge with an almost complete lack of normalcy and then we expect them to come back and be good citizens and fathers and husbands? it’s just a completely torturous and stupid situation. maybe one day we’ll learn from our mistakes and stop engaging in dumbass wars. obama was supposed to be a pretty smart guy, but i honestly can’t find the wisdom in 1) extending the war in afghanistan 2) extending it for the useless time frame of 18 months. it takes 18 months to get a building permit in some cities, how the hell are we going to help bring a backwards ass country like afghanistan into the 20th century, much less the 21st? whatever.

Watched in theater