Document/European Premiere

Tim Hetherington, Sebastian Junger/USA/2009/93 min

A few months before his sacking, the US commander-in-chief for Afghanistan, now the scene of America’s longest-running war in which over 1000 US soldiers have been killed, stated that “We’ve shot an amazing number of people and killed a number and, to my knowledge, none has proven to have been a real threat to the force”. The feelings towards the people doing this unjustified killing, mainly poor young men being spoon-fed the the ideology of manifest destiny, is always complex. For this astonishing doc, directors Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger, respectively a war photographer and a journalist, were embedded with a platoon of US soldiers in the highly dangerous Korengal Valley outpost Restrepo, named in honour of fallen soldier Juan Restrepo. The result really is extraordinary; we’re right next to these soldiers as they fire at the Taliban in the mountains facing them, argue with the village elders about their livestock-turned-collateral damage, and engage in the usual kind of macho, homo-erotic and affectionate camaraderie you tend to see in platoons. Most distressing is the scene in which a young soldier reacts with wide-eyed horror to the death of a fellow soldier, as we witness close-up the moment of his breakdown and in turn how this fuels the savouring of their revenge; by charting this telling relation of emotion, the film humanises its soldiers and reminds us that the real evil is their presence there in a needless war that can only get worse.

Showing @ Cineworld 25 Jun 17:50