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.

  

      

FILM REVIEW: DIRTY WARS

A scene from Dirty Wars.

Scar on mirror

By John Esther

Director Richard Rowley’s superb and solemn documentary does not paint a pretty picture of U.S. foreign policy under the Obama administration.

The Dirty Wars narrative, sort of, starts one night after a U.S. raid results in the deaths of innocent Afghani men, women and children. U.S. sources give one side of the story. Those present, like family members of the victims, give another.

There to uncover what happened before and during the tragedy is journalist Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army). Not one to be embedded, Schahill’s thorough investigation ultimately leads to the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC).

Essentially, a powerful, U.S. covert and secret organization (although not so secret after killing Osama bin Laden), JSOC’s mission is to “find, fix and finish” anything and anyone deemed its target, even if the target is a United States citizen – two of which are actually killed during Scahill’s investigation during the documentary. Why or when something or someone becomes a target is unknown yet JSOC, AKA “American Taliban with big muscles and beards,” continues to grow, without any congressional oversight.

And what is the result? As we have recently learned, there have been more assassinations, drone killings, etc., and granted, it is not like the Obama administration is doing anything new with regard to America’s so-called “War on Terror.” But the Noble Peace Prize Winner was supposed to be less belligerent president than his predecessor.

Winner of the Sundance Cinematography Award: U.S. Documentary, Dirty Wars is the kind of documentary that demands serious attention and even a more serious response from Americans.

 

THEATER REVIEW: OTHER DESERT CITIES

Elephant

By Ed Rampell

Sometimes, agitprop plays come across like pamphlets and onstage screeds. On the other hand, “interior” dramas solely dealing with their characters’ inner lives seem devoid of a social context. However, the great thing about Jon Robin Baitz’s Other Desert Cities is how the playwright adroitly interweaves the play’s political background and subtext with a very realistic family drama, with all the agility of a playwriting Spiderman, who pins tales as well as webs. Traversing a tightrope between two genres, it’s as if Other Desert Cities' dramatist has found a happy medium between, or even perhaps united, the best of the Clifford Odets of Waiting for Lefty with the Eugene O’Neill of The Iceman Cometh. Baitz combines the generation gap, antiwar protest from Vietnam to Iraq, the Reagan era and more with a conflict between a daughter and her parents that would not have been unfamiliar to ancient audiences attending Greek amphitheatres.

Baitz’s skillfully brewed concoction -- decidedly shaken, not stirred -- works exceedingly well in this two-acter, especially as the complex story is brought to life by an ensemble of gifted veteran thespians. The plot concerns Brooke (Robin Weigert), a troubled author who has relocated to the East Coast, who visits her doting parents in their Palm Springs home -- stylishly rendered with desert background by set designer Takeshi Kata -- during the holidays following George W. Bush’s 2004 reelection. At first, the sixtyish Lyman (Robert Foxworth) and Polly Wyeth (JoBeth Williams) are thrilled to see their errant writer of a daughter, as well as their son Trip (Michael Weston), a reality TV producer.

But tensions soon flare, enflamed by politics: Staunch Reaganites who defend Bush’s imperial misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, Lyman and Polly quickly clash with the lefty Brooke. Polly’s substance abusing sister ,Silda Grauman (Jeannie Berlin), enters the combustible fray with pithy critiques of Polly, an ex-screenwriter, and of Lyman, a former B-actor who went on to become GOP chairman.

Just as George and Martha purported to have an offstage son in Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? the Wyeths’ son/ brother/nephew is similarly an unseen presence in Other Desert Cities who casts a long shadow. It turns out that during the 1970s Henry joined a Weathermen-like extremist antiwar group of domestic terrorists who, we are told, after a “propaganda of the deed” to protest Vietnam goes terribly wrong, dies -- probably in a self-inflicted way. The loss of Henry seems to weigh especially heavily on Brooke’s shoulders, causing her to become depressed and institutionalized. But she has come out of her catatonic state by writing a tell-all confessional about her long lamented older brother -- which also threatens to shatter her already polarized family. Brooke’s Republican parents appear to be trying to live down the legacy of their wayward radical son and vociferously object to publication of the book and the ensuing nightmare, presumably because they will have to relive the worst moment of their lives, one which they have been trying to leave behind in the rear view mirror for decades.

The really delicious thing about this play is how its storyline and characters wander about the desert in unexpected ways. There’s nothing worse than seeing a show and correctly guessing the lines of dialogue and figuring out its denouement well in advance. But as the name of this work -- which refers to a road sign -- indicates, Other Desert Cities heads in unforeseen directions, with unexpected plot twists and turns. Act I is a dramedy, with plenty of pithy one-liners and zingers hurled back and forth, often with then-topical references about WMDs, Colin Powell and “whining lefties.” Act II is decidedly more of a drama, with the chickens coming home to roost for the dysfunctional Wyeths.

The ensemble is superbly directed by Robert Egan; well-versed in all things Baitz he has repeatedly collaborated with the playwright, who also created the ABC family series, Brothers & Sisters. The cast is simply stellar.


Other Desert Cities runs through Jan. 6, 2013 at the Mark Taper Forum, 135 N. Grand Ave. LA, CA. 90012. For more information: www.centertheatregroup.org;213/628-2772

    

AUSTIN 2011: HELL AND BACK AGAIN

A scene from Hell and Back Again.

Peace amongst the fire

By Don Simpson

It is the Summer of 2009. A decisive operation is launched by the United States to begin a new counter-insurgency strategy in Afghanistan. The U.S. Marines of Echo Company 2nd Battalion 8th Regiment are dropped deep behind enemy lines to seize a key objective.

Danfung Dennis’s Hell and Back Again opens with Echo Company preparing to take a Taliban stronghold. During their mission, they are ambushed and lose a man. Six months later — near the end of his deployment with Echo Company — Sergeant Nathan Harris is critically injured by a bone-shattering bullet to his hip. Dennis then follows the 25-year-old Harris back to his home in North Carolina, where he and his wife try to piece their lives back together again.

While in North Carolina, Hell and Back Again ponders if and how a war-ravaged Sergeant can readjust to the civilian world, where parking a car at Wal-Mart becomes more stressful and difficult than time spent behind enemy lines in Afghanistan. When Harris says, “I would rather be in Afghanistan where it’s simple,” we believe him because we can tell just by looking at him how mentally and physically painful his post-Afghanistan life has become.

Harris’ civilian life is a relentless cycle of pain, pills, and nausea. He wheels around town, perpetually over-medicated and depressed. This is the very same guy who initially joined the Marines because he always wanted to kill people. Even now, Harris plays with loaded guns as if they are part of a video game. He would return to Afghanistan in a heartbeat. Even his wife admits that Harris turns in to a different person sometimes. In fact, the man she married will never be returning home.

As if visualizing the post-traumatic flashbacks that Harris must be experiencing, Hell and Back Again seamlessly bounces from Harris’ present day experiences to his time spent in Afghanistan. Obviously not knowing that Harris was going to get injured in battle, Dennis initially tagged along with Echo Company as a full-immersion war documentary ala Restrepo and Armadillo. The war footage is brutal and ugly, but not nearly as scary as the noisy, crowded and fluorescent world waiting for Harris back in the United States.

Strangely enough, Dennis breaks from his cinéma vérité form at the end of Hell and Back Again in making the unlikely decision to visually reenact the scene of Harris’ injury while Harris recollects the event in voiceover. This is Hell and Back Again‘s one major flaw; otherwise, Dennis’ film is masterfully constructed documentary using witty metaphoric editing techniques that bring to mind Sergei Eisenstein’s Strike.

INTERVIEW: HEATHER COURTNEY

Director Heather Courtney.

To heed the call up

By Don Simpson

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. These five childhood friends -- with Dominic and Cole as their de facto leaders -- joined the National Guard when they graduated from high school because they were enticed by the college tuition support and $20,000 signing-bonus.

When Courtney first meets the young soldiers, they are 19-years old. Where Soldiers Come From follows the soldiers for four years, beginning with their once-a-month training sojourns at the local National Guard base and remaining by their sides as they are deployed to Afghanistan to sweep for IEDs. The narrative then returns stateside as the five 23-year-old combat veterans attempt to readjust to their civilian lives again.

JEsther Entertainment chatted with Heather Courtney just before the premiere of Where Soldiers Come From at the 2011 South by Southwest Film Festival.

JEsther Entertainment: As a documentary filmmaker, what is your approach to capturing reality?

Heather Courtney: I actually just saw a documentary about documentary filmmaking and one of the filmmakers said: What happens in front of the camera is not always completely the truth, what I hope is to capture a moment that is true and allow the viewers to see a truth for themselves. For me that is a very significant statement because any time you are piecing something together, it becomes an edited and filtered version of reality. What I hope I capture are sincere moments that will help people learn something about themselves and connect with the people on the screen. I try to just let the people in my films say what they want to say. I do not push them at all.

JE: At times it seems very obvious that  the subjects are talking to you, the director. Occasionally, they even say your name. It seems as though you are purposefully informing the audience that this is a film. This is not complete reality. There is someone behind the camera.

HC: [Laughs.] We tried to take a lot of that out, but one person in the film in particular would always say my name and it would always be during very true and emotional moments. But let’s be honest, it is a documentary. There is clearly someone behind the camera asking the questions and the subjects would not be answering these questions if I was not there.

JE: Economics play a major factor in Where Soldiers Come From, specifically because that seems to be the driving force that prompts the subjects of your film to initially join the military.

HC:The the subjects of the film are from the very northern tip of the Upper Peninsula of Northern Michigan; it is a very rural area, very isolated. The nearest city -- Green Bay, Wisconsin -- is over four hours away. For people from any small town in isolated rural areas, economics are always a factor. Research has been published by Bill Bishop that shows that rural America has been effected much more so than other areas by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, because a significant proportion of young men and women from those areas have joined the armed services, often because they do not have any other economic options. The recent economic crisis has made things even more difficult for them.

JE: What changes did you notice in your subjects regarding their opinions of American politics as time progressed?

HC: They were pretty apathetic before going to Afghanistan, whereas their parents were not apathetic at all; they had some very strong opinions. The subjects were also just really freaked out about going to war. That is all they could focus on, all they could handle. Once they arrived in Afghanistan, their political opinions grew directly from their personal experiences. That seems so much stronger to me than someone who forms their political opinions from something they saw on television or read in the newspaper. When they would talk amongst themselves, they would form very informed and articulate opinions. It seems to all come out of their disillusionment and bitterness towards what has happened during their time in Afghanistan.

JE: How much freedom did you have in Afghanistan as far as when and what you could film?

HC: They let me go on almost every mission. They were pretty open to me being there. I was surprised.

JE: Can you explain how you captured the footage while out on military maneuvers from the perspective of the soldiers?

HC: I had these little helmet cams that they would attach to the gun turret on the top of their vehicle and they would attach others to the dashboard to shoot their faces as they were driving. Sometimes they would attach the cameras to their helmets too. There was also a military camera that was installed on the top of the trucks that captured the visuals of the IED explosions.

JE: What has the military’s reaction been to Where Soldiers Come From?

HC: They have not really given me any reaction. They had to vet it to make sure there were not any security issues, but that is the only thing they have commented on.

FILM NEWS: HOLLYWOOD PROTEST

Demonstrators and tourists in front of the fabled Chinese Theatre during the antiwar protest. Photo by Horace Coleman.

Antiwar Activists Arrested at Hollywood’s Chinese Theatre

By Ed Rampell

A March 19 antiwar demonstration in Los Angeles ended with around nine activists being taken away by L.A.P.D. officers after they occupied the courtyard of Hollywood’s world famous Chinese Theatre. Up to 25 veterans or relatives of military personnel deployed to Iraq and/or Afghanistan staged the sit-down strike on the cement blocks bearing movie stars’ footprints and inscriptions in front of the Asian-themed movie palace Sid Grauman opened in 1927. The protesters held photos of their uniformed loved ones and placed boots with name cards over the cement that had been autographed when wet by celebrities such as Clint Eastwood. The sit-down strikers also displayed a cement slab of their own engraved with boot prints and the words “Forgotten Dead,” plus a placard that read: “True Cost of War, 5,941,” referring to the number of U.S. servicemen and women killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The act of civil disobedience began around 3:15 p.m. as an antiwar march and rally protesting the eighth anniversary of the start of the Iraq War, plus the Afghan and now Libyan wars. A speaker on the truck that served as a stage commented that the sit-in participants were “Disrupting business as usual, taking a stand by sitting down.” About 40 armed L.A.P.D. officers surrounded the peaceful activists, using metal railings and bicycles to cut the courtyard off from throngs of demonstrators, tourists and superhero impersonators in front of what is now Mann’s Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Blvd.’s celebrated “Walk of Fame,” with its inset stars honoring various Tinseltown talents.

A policeman videotaped the courtyard occupiers and a policewoman kneeled to talk with participants in the action, which included Dede Miller, the sister of noted “Antiwar Mom” Cindy Sheehan (who reportedly took part in a Northern California protest) and aunt of Casey Sheehan, who was killed in Iraq and whose photo Miller held. The sit-down strikers also included members of Military Families Speak Out, a national organization of people opposed to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars who have relatives or loved ones currently in the military, or who have served in the military since the fall of 2002.

The uniformed officers conferred with an African-American man in a suit who may have been a theater employee, as well as with attorney Jim Lafferty, an organizer of the peace march and rally and head of the L.A. office of the National Lawyers Guild. This reporter, who was in the frontline of the crowd watching the unfolding drama, overheard a sergeant give orders to L.A.P.D. officers: “Take responsibility for the arrests. Two at a time.” At this point about six policemen were admitted from the sidewalk into the Chinese Theatre’s courtyard. One protester, a middle aged man who’d earlier given an angry speech at Hollywood and Vine about what the Iraq War had done to his PTSD-suffering son, was allowed to leave the courtyard, and then delivered another address from the truck/stage.

One by one, beginning with a woman, up to nine sit-down strikers rose and were peacefully led away, accompanied by an officer on either side, as supporters in the crowd applauded and cheered their comrades on, sometimes by name. One women escorted off the property wore a Code Pink T-shirt. Another woman gave the peace sign behind her back as officers accompanied her across the courtyard to an entrance way of an exit leading outside of the theatre complex. The last protester was taken away by police around 4:05 p.m. According to Lafferty, they were booked and charged with trespassing, and then released. The rest of the demonstrators left the scene of their own accord, apparently without being arrested. The black man in plainclothes returned the boots representing fallen warriors to the sidewalk. Police were still inside the theatre courtyard as late as 5:00 p.m.

Coincidentally, one of the cement blocks the sit-down strikes had occupied bore the footprints and inscription of Tom Cruise. Shortly before the civil disobedience had begun, Ron Kovic -- the paralyzed Vietnam vet portrayed by Cruise in Oliver Stone’s 1989 antiwar classic, Born On the Fourth of July – spoke onstage to thousands of rally-goers while ensconced in the wheelchair he’s been confined to since Kovic was shot 43 years ago in Indochina.

“The power of the people is unbeatable,” declared Kovic. “We see it in Tunisia, Cairo. We are not exempt in this country from sweeping change… It can happen here… We are moving into a period of great change.”

Kovic then led the crowd in an a cappella rendition of John Lennon’s "Give Peace a Chance."

Other notables at the demo included actor James Cromwell, who was Oscar-nominated for playing the farmer in 1995’s talking pig comedy, Babe, and more recently appeared in Secretariat, and cinematographer Haskell Wexler, who won two Academy Awards, including for the 1976 Woody Guthrie biopic, Bound For Glory. The Foo Fighters’ Chris Shifflet spoke and sang onstage. Marci Winograd, a perennial left-leaning Democratic congressional candidate now seeking to replace Rep. Jane Harmon, also denounced the wars.

Empty military footgear symbolizing fallen warriors were placed on spots bearing celebrity footprints. Photo by Horace Coleman.

The A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition, which had organized the peace rallies and march, estimated the number of L.A. participants to be about 4,000 people. The event started at noon with a brief rally at the fabled intersection of Hollywood and Vine, followed by a march down Hollywood Blvd. to Sunset Blvd., past CNN’s L.A. headquarters, then back up to Hollywood Blvd., where a second and longer rally was held in front of the Chinese Theatre. Along the way, marchers encountered a handful of religious counter-demonstrators, who they outnumbered by more than 100 to one. The peace parade was led by Kovic, who frequently flashed the peace sign with his fingers. Marchers held antiwar banners and signs and chanted slogans such as: “Hey Obama We Say No, The Occupation’s Got To Go. Hey Obama, Yes You Can. Troops Out of Afghanistan.” An overhead blimp carried by demonstrators bore a banner asking: “How’s the war economy for you?” Speakers emphasized the economic costs of the wars, which they estimated to cost $700 million per day, while schools, hospitals and other essentials were being cutback.

Rally speakers denounced not only the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also the spread of warfare to Libya; the allegedly abusive treatment of imprisoned PFC Bradley Manning, accused of giving classified information to WikiLeaks; as well as the perils of the ongoing nuclear catastrophe in Japan. There were demonstrations at other U.S. cities, such as at Washington, D.C., where more than 100 demonstrators, including Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg, were arrested outside the White House.

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.