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The movie is set up to make you think it’s a documentary, made up of footage
from several different filmmakers, videos over the internet, night-vision
cameras, and other modern technology. Even though the movie is "inspired"
by true events, it doesn’t always maintain the realism that it needs for
you to buy into it.
The location is a checkpoint in Iraq, where American soldiers kill time
between moments of chaos making their own videos – Salazar (Izzy Diaz)
wants to use his footage to get into film school. They all know they’re
sitting targets for snipers and suicide bombers and it can go from quiet
to dead in an instant while they stand in the hot desert in full combat
gear trying to stay alert. This particular unit has been stationed out
here alone far too long – thinking they’re going home only to have their
tour extended. The coverage of their time on duty is intercut with scenes
of life in the barracks as they discuss books, play cards, exchange bravado
talk, and get emotional over letters back home.
Every day they have to worry about new IEDs (improvised explosive devices)
planted the night before. They have to deal with incidents where drivers
don’t understand their stop signals; in one case this leads to a pregnant
woman being shot – which naturally ends up on Iraqi TV. This leads to a
revenge killing, which is shown on the internet.
After a night of drinking, Flake (Patrick Carroll) decides he wants to
do a night raid in order to get close to a 15-year-old girl they see over
and over at the checkpoint – she’s just a "spoil of war". A crime
is committed followed by a Vegas-style cover-up – everything that happens
in Iraq, stays in Iraq. McCoy (Rob Devaney) wants to tell, but he doesn’t
want to be a whistleblower and his military father tells him to keep his
mouth shut for the good of the unit.
A redacted document is one that’s released with all the words blacked out
that might have an impact on National Security and this movie is trying
to make a point that we don’t know everything that’s happening in the war
zones (at least we think that's the point). Okay, we get that ordinary
men subjected to stressful, violent situations can turn brutal and lose
all their humanity, but do we really need another movie turning American
soldiers into monsters to get the message that war is bad. We may all want
the war in Iraq to be over, but this film doesn’t really have anything
to say about that. (Personally, I’m ready for the movies about Iraq to
be over, too.)
The more this goes on, the more nauseating it gets – holding nothing back
when it shows scenes of rape, murder, dead bodies and explosions. It’s
especially sickening when one soldier confesses what he saw after he came
home – and his friends still call him a war hero because he cries when
he talks about not doing anything to stop it. Any point they’re trying
to make gets lost in the conflagration.
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