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| National Geographic |
Strongly recommended by my friend K.P., this gritty film takes us inside the war in Afghanistan during one of its deadlier years in the violent, lawless Korengal Valley. The film's name comes from Outpost Restrepo, a small but tactically-crucial Army position on a rocky outcropping overlooking the valley, and attacked on an almost daily basis by Taliban fighters and other insurgents.
We're given a stark, realistic glimpse at the true horrors of war in the 21st Century, with any Hollywood pretense stripped away and replaced with crushing reality. Nearly every other word in the field is "fuck" or a derivative; the rest of the narrative is told only in the words of the soldiers themselves, mostly in quiet studio interviews done in Italy some time after the war footage was recorded.
Among the most poignant scenes is the death of one soldier in combat. Shot tastefully and without any major gore, what was most unsettling was in fact the sight of a fellow soldier absolutely losing it upon seeing his fallen comrade. Here he is, still under heavy fire by enemy combatants, on a battlefield, openly weeping and sobbing for his friend. It's not something we hear about as we cover military conflict in the media.
I kept thinking to myself as I watched Restrepo how astonishing it was that both the cinematographers who shot the entire thing managed to survive the carnage. Sadly, one of them did lose his life in Libya only a year after the film's release, as he continued to document the chaos there following that nation's own revolution.
Restrepo is not for the faint of heart, or for children. You can find it on Netflix and the iTunes store, as well as on DVD and Blu-Ray.
