FILM REVIEW: THE KILL TEAM

Adam Winfield in The Kill Team. Photo by David Krauss.

Stryke the truth down

By Ed Rampell

If Chelsea/Bradley Manning is the whistleblower best known for exposing U.S. war crimes in Iraq, another Army Specialist, Adam Winfield, is arguably the most famous truth teller who revealed American atrocities in Afghanistan. But like Private First Class Justin Stoner, Winfield found out the hard way that not only is it tough times for those who dare to blow the whistle, but the first casualty of war is still truth.

The 21-year-old infantryman came forward to reveal that soldiers of the Fifth Stryker Brigade, Second Infantry Division, who were deployed near Kandahar, executed Afghans for sport and then planted weapons beside their corpses to “prove” the casualties were “terrorists.” (They also captured these chilling Kodak moments with a series of photos.) Winfield’s “reward” for trying to report these crimes against humanity was, the moment he stepped off a plane when he returned to America, to be arrested and charged with committing premeditated murder. He found himself to be in the Kafka-esque, Catch-22 trap of becoming a target of a major investigation into war crimes he himself had tried to expose.

Winfield’s wartime experiences and subsequent court-martial disillusioned the young volunteer, who undergoes an epiphany and tells a probing camera lens: “War is dirty. It’s not how they portray it in the movies.” But it is how Dan Krauss depicts combat in The Kill Team, a hard hitting, award winning documentary where the fog of war mingles with the haze of hashish. Krauss’ take-no-prisoners doc, which takes its title from the nickname for the Stryker troops gone wild, also demonstrates why military justice is to justice what military music is to music, as the film focuses on Winfield’s “Alice In Wonderland-like” trial and tribulations.

The Kill Team is also very much a moving family drama. Backing him up every step of the way are Winfield’s Cape Coral, Florida parents, Emma and Christopher, an ex-Marine. In 2010 Adam tells his father via instant messenger about the dogfaces’ wrongdoing in Afghanistan and asks him to inform the Army inspector general. Christopher attempts to alert the military, but to no avail. As Adam confronts the ordeals of death threats, his own death wish and court case, Emma and Christopher stand by their son. Even after he receives a three-year sentence and bad conduct discharge his mom and dad unwaveringly believe Adam be not only innocent, but courageous for standing up for what’s right and trying to tell the truth, against all odds.

Although the jury is still out for some as to whether or not Adam -- who did not try to stop the killing of Allah Dad and pled guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter -- is a whistleblower or murderer, Krauss’ nonfiction film paints a sympathetic portrait of its protagonist. The Kill Team also interviews other members of Winfield’s platoon, such as the conflicted Corporal Jeremy Morlock and Private First Class Andrew Holmes, who were both charged with the premeditated murder of 15-year-old Gul Mudin on Jan. 15, 2010. In the course of their horrifying odyssey both become bolder and wiser than they were when they volunteered to become cannon fodder after Uncle Sam got himself in a terrible jam, way down yonder in Afghan land. As part of a plea agreement Morlock, who hails from Sarah Palin’s home town of Wasilla, Alaska, received a 24-year sentence, while Holmes, who is from Boise, Idaho, is serving seven years behind bars. Both were dishonorably discharged.

Pfc. Justin Stoner, from Lebanon, Pennsylvania, was assaulted by fellow soldiers after he reported their drug use. Along with the apparently decent Winfield, Stoner is the film’s conscience and hero and considered to be an informant on this F-Troop’s out of control reign of terror. Questioning the military’s dehumanization of recruits, the philosophical Stoner ruminates: “Your job is to kill. Then why the hell are you pissed off when we do it?” Stoner alleged that he was shown human fingers -- which triggered the murder investigation of the Afghans -- by Staff Sgt. Calvin Gibbs.

The highest ranking soldier charged in this sordid, sorry, scandalous affair is The Kill Team’s bête noir. Staff Sgt. Gibbs of Billings, Montana was found guilty of, among other things, three counts of murder. Gibbs, who declined to be interviewed for the documentary and is mainly glimpsed in pictures shot by a photojournalist, looms as a cross between two classic characters from Hollywood’s Vietnam War epics: Marlon Brando as Col. Kurtz in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 Apocalypse Now and Tom Berenger as Sgt. Barnes in Oliver Stone’s 1986 Platoon. Like them, the gung ho Gibbs reportedly goes rogue, instigates the Stryker Brigaders’ renegade mayhem and cuts fingers off of Afghan cadavers so he can use these bones for a creepy trophy -- a skeletal necklace. Much to his surprise, Gibbs’ running amok on the warpath landed him a life sentence at Fort Leavenworth (where he might have some illuminating tête-à-têtes with fellow inmate Manning).         

Krauss, who directed, co-wrote, produced and shot The Kill Team, pulls no punches as he tells his saga, which won the Tribeca Film Festival’s Best Documentary Feature and the San Francisco International Film Festival’s Golden Gate awards. Unlike most war films The Kill Team unspools slowly, deliberately and is told mostly via a series of talking heads. But it serves as a reminder that far from being a noble endeavor fought, as Winfield ironically muses, by “a bunch of honorable men with unshakeable patriotism,” war is, as Jean Renoir put it in the title of his 1937 pacifist masterpiece, The Grand Illusion. The Kill Team demystifies the mythos epitomized by John Wayne militaristic movies, which starred an actor who never actually served in the U.S. armed forces and whom Garry Wills alleges in his 1998 book John Wayne’s America avoided military service during World War II.

While politically aware audiences will appreciate Krauss’ war-is-hell message, this documentary’s real target market are those young people who -- like an impressionable Adam -- have bought into military madness. After seeing for himself in Afghanistan’s version of “the big muddy” the harsh reality of what the apocalyptic Col. Kurtz calls “the horror," Adam wised up. Perhaps, by seeing The Kill Team, would-be volunteers for Washington’s endless imperial misadventures will wake up and stay home instead.

  

      

LAFF 2014: LAST DAYS OF VIETNAM

A scene from Last Days in Vietnam. 

Family heirlooms 

By Ed Rampell

As U.S. foreign policy in Iraq faces its biggest defeat since the Indochina invasions, the niece of US President John Kennedy -- who escalated the U.S. presence in Vietnam -- has directed the cinematic equivalent of putting a blossom on a turd. Rory Kennedy has fired the opening salvo in the propaganda war regarding upcoming historic anniversaries with Last Days in Vietnam. This film is so shamefully, wildly one-sided film that this historian/reviewer hesitates to call it a “documentary” -- rather, Last Days in Vietnam is a piece of propaganda in the very worst sense of the term. Indeed, this egregiously biased, one-sided work is arguably more of a mock-umentary -- but unlike This is Spinal Tap, Rory's Orwellian disinformation is no laughing matter.

As the 50^thanniversary of the Gulf of Tonkin Incident -- that fabricated hoax US President Lyndon Johnson exploited to further escalate U.S. military activities in Vietnam -- much as  the Bush regime’s blatant lies about Iraq’s nonexistent weapons of mass destruction were cooked up to “justify” another disastrous U.S. invasion of a sovereign nation that had not attacked America -- nears this August, and the 40^th anniversary of Vietnam’s liberation approaches next April 30, Last Days in Vietnam desperately tries to find something positive to say about the role the American military and diplomats played as the “Yankees go home” scenario unfolded and the communists took over what was then Saigon.

According to the film, some soldiers and State Department officials took great pains -- and sometimes at grave personal risk to themselves -- to evacuate about thousands of the Vietnamese, including military, who had worked for and married U.S. personnel, as well as the up to 5,000-7,000 Yanks still “in country.”

Rory and her partners, including co-writer/husband Mark Bailey, have taken great pains to try and find something glorious and heroic in the greatest defeat for U.S. imperialism in the entire history of the American empire. In their disgraceful effort to make a stinking garlic smell like a rose, the filmmakers willfully expunge history and any sort of context from their one dimensional exercise in disinformation. 

For example: It’s alleged that during 1968’s TếtOffensive the communists executed thousands of South Vietnamese at Huế. However, the countless war crimes committed by Washington and US forces are never, never once mentioned in this execrable piece of agitprop. Hey Rory, ever hear of the Mỹ Lai Massacre? How about the 1972 bombing of Hanoi -- during Christmas? Or the mining of Haiphong Harbor? Of course, the list of American atrocities committed against the Indochinese -- starting with intervention in the domestic affairs of nations that never attacked the U.S.A. -- is endless, the millions murdered by carpet bombing, landmines, agent orange, etc., is innumerable, and it would require an entire series of documentaries to record them all. But Rory never mentions any of them -- although she goes out of her way to vilify the Reds (don’t forget that her father, Bobby Kennedy, served on anti-communist Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s witch-hunting Senate Permanent Subcommitteeon Investigations).

Last Days in Vietnam simplistically endeavors to depict the Vietnam invasion (which, by the way, the Vietnamese call “the American War”) as a conflict between the north and the south, with Washington backing the latter. Rory conveniently commits the heinous crime of omission by never -- not even once! -- ever mentioning the National Liberation Front (NLF), the resistance fighters in the south. According to the Pentagon Papers, 300,000 people belonged to the NLF by 1962 (you know, when Rory's uncle was president). Millions f people in the south must have supported the NLF in order for the TếtOffensive to have been carried out in 1968, let alone for the south to have been liberated seven years later, beating both the American imperialists and the army it supplied and funded. Last Days in Vietnam mentions that the ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) “eroded” in 1975, but never ponders why the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) and the Viet Cong didn’t.

(Assuming that Last Days in Vietnam's conceit -- that the U.S. merely backed the south against the north -- is correct, then why is it that last month, when this critic visited Hanoi, he saw wartime shrines, such as the Hanoi Hilton and Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum, but did not see some wall inscribed with the names of the 50,000-plus Vietnamese who died fighting in the U.S. Civil War, from 1861-1865?)

Last Days in Vietnam's sources include former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who appears in news clips and presumably in contemporary, original interviews, where this mass murderer of millions in Indochina, Chile, Timor, etc., is once again given the softball “elder statesman” treatment. Richard Armitage -- no, not the Hobbit actor but the Navy and U.S. government operative who apparently never met a covert action he didn’t like -- is likewise given the hero treatment. But Armitage’s willingness to break the law -- purportedly to save south Vietnamese lives -- is never put in the context of his alleged involvement with Ted Shackley, the CIA chief in south Vietnam, and the heroin trade, or Armitage’s dubious role in the Iran-Contra Scandal -- are never mentioned.The film also conducts original interviews with former ARVN officers.

After the LA Film Festival screening an audience member asked Rory and crew members why nobody from the communist and NLF side were interviewed for the film and she replied, “We considered this but ultimately their part of the story was about the war. We wanted to focus on the heroes,” that is, those Americans who put themselves in peril to rescue south Vietnamese lives, in order to tell what Rory blithely called “a human story.”

Author Stuart Herrington, who served in military intelligence and then the Defense AttachéOrganization in south Vietnam and is a source in the film as he was an eyewitness to the events of April 1975, joined Rory for the post-screening Q&A. Herrington said that the communist side “did not add to the film” and that they would have merely indulged in “chest thumping” had they been interviewed. Sore Loser!  As if Yanks never take part in “American triumphalism” screaming “USA! USA!” and the like, especially when it invades -- unprovoked -- smaller, weaker nations.

But here’s the real reason why this agitprop pic never makes any effort to show the other side of the story: NVA and NLF supporters would presumably point out that the southerners the Yankees tried to save at the last minute were collaborators and running dogs of U.S. imperialism, who supported a Washington-backed puppet government. And that it was the Viet Cong who were the south’s real patriots. But don’t worry: The former president’s niece, charter member of the ruling class, has taken great care to make sure that American ears aren’t offended by hearing the other side of this “human story.” The Vietnamese Left doesn’t just not get equal time -- it gets no air time in this blatantly biased propaganda flick, violating journalistic ethics to present multiple viewpoints, without fear or favor.

However, skillful propagandist that Rory is, in her effort to whitewash history and to try to ferret out something positive in a colossal debacle so she can pander to U.S. rightwing sentiment, there’s something even she can’t hide. Look closely at the newsreel clips as the NVA tanks roll into what was renamed Ho Chi Minh City. Not only are the soldiers jubilant, but look at the smiling faces of the Vietnamese masses as they are being liberated from decades of Japanese, French and Yankee occupation and imperialism. Perhaps we should thank Rory for not using CGI to turn those smiles into frowns.

To be fair, Rory has produced and/or helmed some good documentaries in the past, including 2005’s Street Fight, 2006’s The Homestead Strike and 2007’s Ghost of Abu Ghraib. The jury is still out as to what US President Kennedy would have done in Vietnam had he had a second term in office. Some, like film director Oliver Stone (JFK), contend he planned to pull out of Vietnam (which Stone and others believe is a major reason why the president was liquidated). And Rory’s father, Bobby, did run as a peace candidate in 1968, although again, bullets cut short his life and who knows how a possible Bobby presidency might have ended the war, instead of Tricky Dick Nixon's ascension to the presidency in 1968?

And Last Days in Vietnam does point out that the U.S. Ambassador to south Vietnam, the Nixon-appointed Graham Martin, was in denial of reality up to the very last minute (if not, like the pig who appointed him, unhinged), resulting in chaotic, last minute evacuation plans. More than 400 of those Vietnamese camping out at the U.S. embassy grounds in what had been Saigon never made it to those choppers or boats to escape their fates. 

Having said this, with liberals like Rory Kennedy, who needs reactionaries? 

Last Days in Vietnam will premiere on PBS’ (your tax dollars at work!) American Experience in Winter/Spring 2015 -- just in time to brainwash Americans as the 40^th anniversary of U.S. imperialism’s greatest defeat nears, and as another catastrophe for Washington’s foreign policy unfolds in Iraq. 

But the real lesson to draw from the Vietnam invasion is not that at the very end, perhaps a handful of Yanks put themselves in harm’s way. (Which is a bit like arsonists patting themselves for rescuing a few folks from the house they’ve set afire.) Rather, the true moral of the story is that being the world’s policeman is a disastrous policy that costs Americans and the nations they willy-nilly invade dearly, in blood and treasure. U.S. military and intelligence are arguably the most destabilizing forces on Earth, with bases straddling the globe and eternally intervening in others’ internal affairs. Nobody likes busybodies and meddlers: If you go around the world sticking your nose into other people’s business you’re likely to get punched in the nose. Washington’s empire is bankrupting a country that can’t even take care of those hapless soldiers who politicians and corporations blithely send abroad for foreign misadventures -- should they eventually make it back home outside of body bags. No amount of flag waving can hide the truth: that when it comes to militarism, Washington should mind its own business -- as if America doesn’t have enough pressing problems back home.

Having just returned from Vietnam, this reviewer can assure readers that there is life after U.S. imperialism. Rory's despicable, reprehensible propaganda flick might be called Last Days in Vietnam, but the liberation and reunification were certainly not the last days of Vietnam. The Vietnamese won the war and they are winning the peace, proving that the last shall be first.

NEWPORT BEACH 2012: THE WAR AROUND US

Sherine Tadros in The War Around Us.

There will be no shelter here

By Ed Rampell

One of the hardest hitting documentaries I’ve seen in years, Abdallah Omeish’s The War Around Us deserves not only distribution so audiences can see it, but also an Oscar nomination.

The War Around Us is the true story of the only two international journalists reporting from the war zone, as Israel bombarded and invaded Gaza in late 2008. Al Jazeera’s Cairo-born, Arab-American Ayman Mohyeldin and Arab-British Sherine Tadros were on the ground in Gaza City during the Israeli military operation that resulted, according to this gripping documentary, in the highest number of Palestinians killed in a single day since 1948.

The dynamic duo of Mohyeldin and Tadros does yeoman work reporting on the war’s consequences on a largely civilian population for the Arab network, and provide a window on the conflict to the outside world. The doc alleges that the Israeli Defense Forces committed war crimes against noncombatants, including unarmed women, children and elders, including the use of white phosphorus, which an Israeli spokesman denies, although eyewitnesses, including human rights activists, confirm it. During the conflagration, as hospitals are filled beyond the bursting point and basics such as electricity, water and even cheeseburgers, are cut off, a U.N. compound is bombarded by the IDF.

The War Around Us is a gripping reminder that war is hell, and of a specific conflict most of us have forgotten about. Of course, the poor Palestinians remember it, but this doc would have benefitted from providing more context as to why the Israelis did what they did, and the roles that the change in U.S. administrations (from the Bush to the Obama regime) and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s alleged corruption played in this devastation -- so heroically chronicled by Mohyeldin and Tadros.   

  

  

SXSW 2011: 13 ASSASSINS

A scene from 13 Assassins.

Sword to disobey

By Don Simpson

13 Assassins, Takashi Miike's remake of the 1963 Eiichi Kudo film, takes place in Japan during mid-19th century. The Shogunate has known peace for many years and the Samurai have grown soft and lazy in their inactivity. Something has got to change.

The sadistically inclined Lord Naritsugu Matsudaira (Gorô Inagaki) is on the fast track to power in the Shogunate. His penchant for killing and raping innocent civilians for sheer entertainment value has forced the hand of the noble advisor to the Shogun, Sir Doi (Mikijiro Hira), to plan Lord Naritsugu’s assassination. Doi promptly recruits one of the last true samurai, Shinzaemon Shimada (Kôji Yakusho), to establish a team for this very risky mission.

The first act of 13 Assassins focuses on Shinzaemon gathering his team. He scours the land for the few remaining competent and trustworthy samurai with a few less competent, but very dedicated and trustworthy ones, nonetheless, thrown in for good measure. Eventually Shinzaemon finds twelve samurai who are willing to risk their life in order to participate in Lord Naritsugu’s demise. Later, one non-samurai, Koyata (Yûsuke Iseya), joins the fold along their journey, bringing the total to 13. 

Soon Shinzaemon finds himself face-to-face with Naritsugu's lead samurai, Hanbei Kitou (Masachika Ichimura), Shinzaemon’s old rival from training school, now his nemesis, and the "chess" match begins. Shinzaemon’s small group of samurai prepare to battle Hanbei’s samurai army of hundreds. Facing impossible odds, Shinzaemon is forced to go all in with a high risk gamble. The thirteen assassins choose a small town to fortify with the hope that strategic preparation will somehow even out the odds.

As the third act commences, so does the drawn-sword-out slaughter fest. Surprisingly, the blood and violence never becomes gratuitous; if anything, Miike restrains himself in an effort to make a profound statement about the senselessness of war. As Lord Naritsugu revels in the bloody mayhem, his army blindly follows him. Miike skillfully highlights the moral dilemma of the film’s samurai -- they must weigh obedience against justice. The battle is between the blindly obedient and the morally just. The morally just are backed into a corner; with the future of Japan at stake, they are forced to kill their foes in defense of their country.

Since we are talking about a group of samurai hired to be heroes, it is only natural 13 Assassins remind anyone who has seen Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai of that epic film in which samurai are hired to protect a village from bandits.

The Koyata character offers a hefty dash of Kurosawa-esque comic relief and besides the narrative trope of recruiting heroes into a team for a mission, Miike also co-opts Kurosawa’s anti-war stance. 13 Assassins is an unexpectedly mature and profound film for the incredibly prolific Miike and, truth be told, I never thought I would compare Kurosawa with Miike. They have both traditionally been polar opposites for me: Kurosawa the formal master and Miike the guilty pleasure. Suddenly, with 13 Assassins, the two worlds have collided. 13 Assassins is dramatically more violent than anything Kurosawa ever created yet 13 Assassins could very well be a remake of Seven Samurai.

SXSW 2011: WHERE SOLDIERS COME FROM

Dominic Fredianelli in Where the Soliders Come From.

Class warfare

By Don Simpson

So, where do soldiers come from? As far as I can determine, soldiers are not delivered by a stork nor are they created by the gratuitous mating of birds and bees, but there have been several military decisions made in the last decade to make one think that soldiers are totally expendable beings.

Research shows that, for the most part, U.S. soldiers come from poor, uneducated, rural families and Heather Courtney’s documentary Where Soldiers Come From gives us an example of one such group of young soldiers from the Upper Peninsula of Northern Michigan. Dominic Fredianelli and four of his friends joined the National Guard when they graduated from high school because they were enticed by the college tuition support and $20,000 signing-bonus (the average annual income in their county is only $21,186).

When Courtney first meets the young soldiers, they are just 19. Where Soldiers Come From follows the soldiers for four years, beginning with their monthly training sojourns at the local National Guard base and remaining by their sides until the inevitable happens -- they are deployed to Afghanistan to sweep for IEDs. (While the young men are awar, Courtney makes a few return trips to Michigan to find out how the soldiers’ families are holding up.)

Then the narrative returns stateside as the five 23-year-old combat veterans attempt to readjust to their civilian lives . The most amazing aspect of Where Soldiers Come From is watching Courtney’s five subjects evolve from being politically apathetic -- showcased brilliantly as they listlessly observe Barack Obama win the 2008 Presidential election on television -- to becoming damningly incredulous about the U.S. military and its role in Afghanistan.

Despite the obvious temptation of bombarding the audience with additional footage of the war-torn soldiers and their families railing against U.S. economic, military and foreign policies, Courtney refrains from turning Where Soldiers Come From into a heavy handed political diatribe. Instead, the resulting film is a deeply humanistic tale of five young men yearning to earn some basic financial stability in their futures.

Americans rarely acknowledge the existence of a rigid class system. Instead we are led to believe that free market capitalism allows everyone equal opportunities to become successful, but that is far from true. Since the nation’s poor cannot afford higher education, they are left with only a few options, one of which is to join the military (during a perpetual state of wartime, no less). It is a sorry state of affairs when an entire segment of our population has to risk their lives -- for senseless wars, no less -- for the sole purpose of having a chance to claw their way up from the lowest economic rung of our oppressive class system.

With two full-immersion documentaries about the Afghanistan war -- Where Soldiers Come From and Armadillo -- screening at SXSW 2011, it is difficult to avoid comparing them. Courtney’s film utilizes an array of styles and techniques of cinematography to keep things visually stimulating, though Where Soldiers Come From never becomes as over-stylized as Armadillo. In fact, other than both documentaries utilizing cameras mounted on the soldiers (and their vehicles) while out on maneuvers -- thus throwing the audience right into the middle of the action -- Where Soldiers Come From and Armadillo could not be more different. Not only does Where Soldiers Come From approach its subjects with much more intimacy, but (thanks in part to its more humble production values) it also seems more honest and, dare I say, real.

TRUE/FALSE FILM FEST 2011: ARMADILLO

A scene from Armadillo.

A rotten state of war

By Don Simpson

Armadillo begins in January 2009 as a group of young Danish soldiers make their final preparations -- including doing what young soldiers do best: get drunk and party with strippers -- for a six-month stint in Afghanistan. The troops say their goodbyes to their families and head to the Armadillo military base -- where approximately 270 Danish and British soldiers are stationed under NATO and ISAF command -- in the Helmand province of Afghanistan.

Once we -- and I really do mean we, since Lars Skee’s cinematography throws us right into the middle of the action -- arrive at Armadillo, we tag along with the Danes through the thick and thin, exciting and mundane, violent and peaceful. We spend a decent amount of leisure time with the soldiers, gaining a very important perspective of how they wind down after their patrols. They maintain their weapons, exercise, phone home, drink beer, play video games and watch porn. A majority of their patrols even seem uneventful, if not incredibly tedious, but the soldiers must always remain prepared for when the shit really hits the fan -- such as when a Danish commander becomes a victim of a roadside bomb (he recovers and soon rejoins his cohorts at Armadillo).

A group of soldiers who have opted to volunteer (yes, volunteer) for a risky night patrol find themselves -- and the cameras -- pinned down by Taliban gunfire. One of the Danes tosses a hand grenade into a ditch infested with Taliban fighters. Two soldiers follow-up to ensure that the Taliban fighters are finished off by peppering the severely injured enemy with a deadly barrage of automatic gunfire.

The patrol returns to Armadillo, congratulating each other on the victorious battle. After a debriefing, during which time the soldiers are visibly still quite high on the adrenaline of war, it is explained that an unidentified soldier called home to discuss the episode with his parents, expressing concern that the soldiers laughed about the liquidation of the Taliban. The parents immediately contacted the Danish Command and Armadillo now faces the possibility of being reprimanded severely. (The release of Armadillo in Denmark has further inflamed this debate.) Nevertheless, two of the soldiers from the patrol are awarded medals of honor. The next thing we know, their six months are up and the soldiers return to Denmark.

Armadillo is a truly amazing and stunning film. Danish documentary filmmaker Janus Metz and his team became fully immersed in Afghanistan's Green Zone in order to follow this platoon of young Danes. The resulting film is not only proof that Metz and his production team risked their lives in order to bring these images to multiplexes around the world, but Armadillo is also a staggering technological achievement -- albeit a questionable one -- in the world of documentary filmmaking.

I can only go so long without addressing the elephant in the war room: the legitimacy of the images. (Need I remind you that this is True/False.) Do not get me wrong, I have absolutely no doubts that the battle scenes are one hundred percent authentic and I cannot stress enough that Skee’s capturing of the war footage is breathtaking. The characters are real and I suspect that most, if not all, of the dialogue is natural and unscripted as well.

I just have a sneaky suspicion that most of the non-battle scenes are constructed and orchestrated by Metz -- mainly because the scenes seem too perfectly staged. One of the more gratuitous examples: the closing shower scene. Armadillo is structured, photographed and directed much more like a fiction film (think: The Battle of Algiers meets Apocalypse Now) than a documentary. It is a gritty neo-realist war drama, except no one (as far as we know) is acting.

Reality is not the only thing that is blurred in Armadillo, politics are too. In fact, the political message of Armadillo is left quite ambiguous. Metz teeters a very fine line, intertwining footage showing the senseless atrocities of war while never disrespecting the Danish soldiers or the legitimacy of the war itself. Armadillo is by no means a critique. Instead it is Metz’s attempt to humanise the combatants on both sides of the nontraditional battlefield.