War Films Make Strong Impact

In watching 2010’s documentary Restrepo, I was immediately transported to how I felt while watching The Hurt Locker from 2009.  Even though Restrepo is a nonfiction film and The Hurt Locker is a fictional feature, they both brought the same brutality and realism of war to the foreground. 

Yes, they are both set during the war currently being fought in the Middle East (Restrepo was set in the Afghanistan conflict and The Hurt Locker was set in Iraq) so right there, you might say they would bring similar feelings and emotions to mind.  But, many war films do not pack the punch that these two do. 

It’s hard to say I loved either film, since they are such disturbing and brutal movies, neither of which I will ever be likely to watch again. These are not the kinds of movies you want to re-live over and over again. But while I was watching each, I was enthralled with the realty of war.  When General Sherman said “war is hell,” he sure got that right.  And these two films capture the hell with exquisite and careful brilliance.

War films are not the types of films I normally gravitate towards.  But I would like to think that I know what good filmmaking is and what good storytelling is.  And both of these fall into the “great” filmmaking and “great” storytelling arena.

Never having been to war or even war-torn areas, these films are what I, as a naive civilian, imagine combat to be like…gritty and dismal and bleak and, at times, boring. There are men quarreling and having everyday personality issues like you and I do in the workplace. There are anger issues and missing family.  There is death.

Unlike some war films where the action and personalities of the soldiers and even the violence seems contrived, these films just seemed, to me at least, authentic.  I guess more credit here would have to go to The Hurt Locker for this authenticity since it is a fictional film…where as Restrepo, as a documentary, would naturally be more authentic and real or it would not be living up to the documentary genre.

But, I have seen documentaries that rely more on contriteness and clichéd interviews than realism.  Restrepo has to be as close to realism in war as it can get.  Both films have a nail-biting intensity that you can almost feel pulsing through you as you watch them.  And The Hurt Locker also morphs into a thriller towards its ending, which packs an even stronger punch in an already brutal film.  With so many trite, predictable features and documentaries being made today (some even about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan), The Hurt Locker and Restrepo stand out high among the pack

The Hurt Locker: 2009, rated R, 131 minutes, directed by Kathryn Bigelow, starring Jeremy Renner and Anthony Mackie. The Niles Public Library owns copies of this title on DVD.

Restrepo: 2010, rated R, 93 minutes, directed by Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger.  The Niles Public Library owns copies of this title on DVD.