The Wall

THE WALL (Doug Liman, 2017)

The Iraq War is officially winding down in 2007 in THE WALL, but fulfilling their duties are no less dangerous for Staff Sergeant Shane Matthews (John Cena) and his spotter Allan Isaac (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). The pair are summoned near a pipeline under construction where an Iraqi sniper has been picking off contractors. They are on the scene to ascertain whether there are any survivors and if they can find the enemy responsible for killing with surgical precision.

Scanning the site from a distance while camouflaged, they determine that no one is alive but are less certain if the gunman might still be in the vicinity. Matthews grows tired of waiting and approaches the construction scene. It’s not long before a bullet strikes him and brings him down. Isaac attempts to come to his help, but unable to locate the sniper, he is also shot and is forced to take shelter behind a crumbling wall. His radio is damaged in the exchange, so when he is able to make contact with his communications device, the voice on the other end belongs to Juba (Laith Nakli), the hidden Iraqi responsible for all of these casualties.

THE WALL provides a good example of how direction and editing can enhance what is on the page. The screenplay by Dwain Worrell could be realized as a stage play mounted on a shoestring budget and not lose its essence. That quality doesn’t inherently detract from the film but reveals its limitations. THE WALL is primarily a dialogue between Iraq War counterparts that hits familiar notes about soldiers on opposite sides of a conflict. The film feels most vital when the conversation is about the matter at hand and digs into the cat-and-mouse tactics each man employs to gain advantages. Exploring this single faceoff as emblematic of the larger conflict yields more ordinary observations.

What Worrell brings to the film isn’t to be discounted, but director Doug Liman keeps this showdown tense when the story and dialogue fade in urgency. THE WALL has something of an exercise or challenge aspect to the production. It’s as though it is being made under limitations for the sake of prompting more creative decisions. Liman and editor Julia Bloch are up to the task as they never lose sight of the real-time (or mostly real-time) pressures and constrain the film’s perspective to what Isaac can see with the naked eye or his busted scope.

With Juba existing as a disembodied voice, he assumes the mantle of confessor and executioner. Isaac continues to live not out of mercy but so he can account for his and his country’s sins while receiving no promise of absolution for either. The desert setting lends to the impression of Isaac and Juba’s interaction harkening to a stark, primitive time when man felt more deeply vulnerable to an unseen interlocutor in control of his fate. THE WALL is not obliged to resolve the issues it inspects about this particular war, but its bitter conclusion smacks of a beginner’s casual understanding of nihilism. The pessimism isn’t necessarily uncalled for; it just seems like the easiest way out.

Grade: B-

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT (Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, 2015)

With its title conveyed in the NATO phonetic alphabet, WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT hints at the main character’s heedlessness in becoming a war correspondent and astonishment at what she finds to be normal in that environment. Kim Baker (Tina Fey) is tired of spinning her wheels writing lightweight scripts at a cable news channel, so when her employer seeks on-camera talent to cover the war in Afghanistan, she grabs the opportunity even though she’s not prepared for the inherent hardships and danger. She has a boyfriend who is often traveling but no kids, which frees her to accept the initial six-month assignment.

Beginning in 2003 Kim sets up her base in Kabul in a place akin to a ramshackle hostel for international journalists. Tanya Vanderpoel (Margot Robbie) gives her a crash course in the dynamics of the place, particularly in regard to her high desirability in a spot with few western women and many men. Scottish photojournalist Iain MacKelpie (Martin Freeman) becomes a friend who would like to get more familiar with Kim. Interpreter Fahim Ahmadzai (Christopher Abbott) tries to be protective of her even as she takes unadvised risks. Kim gets hooked on the thrill of reporting from a war zone while the public back home increasingly is losing interest.

In WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT Fey stays largely true to the persona she’s developed in films and TV shows but adapts it for a setting more serious than audiences are used to seeing her in. Once again she’s a clever, funny, fortysomething single woman with an unfulfilling personal and professional life, but in this situation there’s little time to spend fretting about her disappointments. Kim’s intelligence and sharp wit function as shields, if not weapons, in a hostile land. She is quick with withering remarks and crude rejoinders, in part because it’s what survival in the male-dominated culture demands, yet there’s a limit to how much her verbal assertiveness can protect her. Fey is good at showing how Kim mounts her defenses while remaining aware of her vulnerability. Her funny performance demonstrates that her character can drink and swear like one of the boys but still faces disadvantages because of her gender.

Kim rediscovers herself during her time in Afghanistan, but WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT, based on Kim Barker’s book about her experiences, resists being EAT PRAY LOVE goes to war. The film is Kim’s story of personal growth, but it also depicts the lack of change where she’s reporting from. Robert Carlock’s screenplay observes the absurdity and sadness in war-torn Afghanistan. It’s funny that Kim doesn’t recognize the scam of a boy crying over the broken eggs he was going to sell on the street and heartrending to realize that he’s out there doing it out of necessity. There’s humor in a local mistaking an African-American soldier’s presence as meaning that the Russians are now black, yet it points out the decades-long, unresolved conflict in the region.

Directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa maintain the tricky harmony of laughing at the strangeness of a war zone without demeaning those who endure bombings, searches, and gun battles. Alfred Molina’s portrayal of an upper Afghan official who drops thinly veiled come-ons to Kim is the one out-of-tune exception to WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT’s tonal balance. Molina’s performance contains menace as he implies receiving sex for secrets, but the threatening aspect of him is overshadowed by his clownish behavior. Otherwise WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT stays clear-eyed while taking an askew view inside the bubble of war.

Grade: B

War Horse

WAR HORSE (Steven Spielberg, 2011)

The four-legged protagonist in WAR HORSE is born as a wild thoroughbred, sold at auction to a buyer who must use him to plow fields, resold to the British army, and ultimately serves on both sides in World War I.  The horse named Joey is not intended for working the fields, but that’s what he is needed for when drunken farmer Ted Narracott (Peter Mullan), in a fit of pique, bids up the cost unreasonably high so his landlord Lyons (David Thewlis) will not win the beast.

Ted’s wife Rose (Emily Watson) immediately recognizes the foolishness of such a purchase and insists that he take the horse back.  Their teenage son Albert (Jeremy Irvine) loves the horse and pledges to train Joey to do whatever he must to help the family farm.  Since Ted refuses to back down from his reckless decision, it’s up to Albert and Joey to ready a rocky Devon field for turnips.

Boy and horse succeed when no on expects them to, but their happy time together comes to an end when Ted sells Joey to the British army at the onset of World War I. The officer promises to take good care of the horse, and a tearful Joey vows to see him again.  For Joey, this is merely the beginning of an adventure that will have him charging into battle for the British and pulling artillery for the Germans.

WAR HORSE director Steven Spielberg turns to the films of John Ford for inspiration in looking at war’s devastating and dehumanizing effects.  He adopts the swooningly earnest style in all of its broad emotional sweep, camera placement, and widescreen Technicolor cinematography.  While made with great technical proficiency, WAR HORSE is determinedly old-fashioned in how Spielberg tells the story, which is a fitting creative strategy considering that the film studies the convergence of the old and the modern.

The battle sequences are as thrillingly directed as the World War II fighting Spielberg thrust viewers into during SAVING PRIVATE RYAN and just as tragic in depicting the great loss of life.  A British charge on horseback into a German camp becomes a slaughter at the edge of the woods, where man and animal are no match for machines.  Spilling out of the trenches for combat in no man’s land is a near certain death sentence no matter which side one enters from.  The men’s lives may be more valued, but they’re protected with little more care than the horses that are literally worked to death.  None of this is as a graphic as in SAVING PRIVATE RYAN. Rather, it’s more in line with the standards in the 1940s and ‘50s, yet the impact in observing this wasteful sacrifice is no less powerful.

Charges of sentimentalism are lobbed freely at Spielberg.  There’s no question that the director works to yield big emotional payoffs, especially in this traditional melodramatic form.  Still, WAR HORSE’s ostensibly happy ending comes with the knowledge that the boy and the horse have witnessed many atrocities that may haunt them in the years to come just as Ted is stalked by his memories from military service.  The deep red sky hanging over the Narracott homestead and drenching everything under it in its color is a stark contrast to the blue heaven and green landscape they once knew.  Man and horse have been forced to act contrary to their nature.  Like the donkey in Robert Bresson’s AU HASARD BALTHAZAR, the beast suffers for humanity’s failings.  While Albert and Joey have survived, some stains, like the looming color above and around them, cannot be escaped.

Grade: B+

The Messenger

THE MESSENGER (Oren Moverman, 2009)

In THE MESSENGER Staff Sergeant Will Montgomery (Ben Foster) returns home from Iraq as a wounded but recovering war hero. To complete his remaining service time Will is assigned to the casualty notification team and placed under the command of Captain Tony Stone (Woody Harrelson). Together they are the bearers of bad news that must be delivered in a timely manner to killed soldiers' next of kin.

Tony approaches the work as a high risk military mission. Park up the street so as not to tip off those they're visiting. Do not go off script. Do not touch or console the next of kin. Get in, deliver the message, get out. The casualty assistance team is for dealing with the family members in a personal manner, not them.

Three years sober and thrice divorced, Tony is a hardened man performing a hard job. Will also has his share of emotional injuries that keep him up at night, most notably his frustration with former girlfriend Kelly (Jena Malone). Although she may travel to welcome him home with a conjugal visit, she mostly seems to be moving on with someone else.

Will shows he may be willing to get on with his life when he takes an interest in Olivia (Samantha Morton), a mother who has an unusual reaction to being told her husband is dead, but such a relationship is fraught with complications, not the least of which comes from Tony's sharp disapproval.

THE MESSENGER opens promisingly as we observe two emotionally damaged men do the delicate work that no one wants to do, least of all those soldiers who have served in combat and survived. Their mere presence reminds the next of kin that their loved ones were not as fortunate. Family members try to keep Will and Tony from even saying the words, as though what happened isn't real or true unless verbalized. These painful scenes are not new to war movies, but THE MESSENGER sees them from the unconsidered perspective of those giving, rather than receiving, the news.

Foster and Harrelson are uniformly good at conveying the torment these Army men have internalized and accept as their crosses to bear. Harrelson virtually manages to clench his entire body, even when he's supposedly letting down his guard. Foster burns with a quiet intensity that makes the intention of his actions all the more inscrutable.

THE MESSENGER examines the challenges of being on the casualty notification team, especially now as they must race against the instant spread of information, but eventually it stops seeing the men and just the job. THE MESSENGER grinds to a stop when it becomes clear that Oren Moverman, who directed and co-wrote the screenplay, isn't leading the plot anywhere but toward a pat message about the price of war on the military and unenlisted.

Instead of telling one or both of these characters' stories or illuminating their crises, THE MESSENGER falls into a repetitive pattern of witnessing aggrieved reactions to the awful news and the messengers' struggles to cope. Casualty statistics don't account for the scars war leaves on everyone touched by it, yet THE MESSENGER'S clipped insight that war is hell is just the sort of line straight from the manual that the film strenuously cautions against.

Grade: C+

The Hurt Locker

THE HURT LOCKER (Kathryn Bigelow, 2008)

With little more than a month remaining on their 2004 tour of duty in Baghdad, Bravo Company's Sgt. JT Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Spc. Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty) are hoping to get out of Iraq alive and in one piece. In THE HURT LOCKER a routine but dangerous mission results in a fellow soldier's death. Naturally, the accident unsettles the surviving men in the company, the jittery Eldridge in particular. Bravo Company disarms improvised explosive devices littering the war-torn streets, so very little margin of error exists for avoiding tragic consequences.

The introduction of Staff Sgt. William James (Jeremy Renner) to their ranks does nothing to alleviate Sanborn and Eldridge's uneasiness. James possesses a phenomenal talent for disabling IEDs and staying cool under pressure, but he's also prone to risk-taking that endangers himself and all other military personnel in the vicinity. For James such disregard for protocol is necessary to achieve the adrenaline rush that attracts him to the work and makes him so successful. It certainly helps that he's wired a little differently than other soldiers, but his methods also ratchet up the tension in already stress-filled situations.

Screenwriter Mark Boal based THE HURT LOCKER on his experiences as an embedded journalist with a bomb disposal unit in Iraq. The script's authenticity and director Kathryn Bigelow's cinema verité style pull us into the film with a mixture of awe and terror. The film plunks us among these men performing incredibly hazardous work day in and day out and leaves us with frazzled nerves and appreciation for their service. Viewed purely as an action film, THE HURT LOCKER delivers again and again with tense scenes of IED disarmament and the potential for combat at any moment. The repetition can have a numbing effect, which admittedly works toward the film's purpose of addressing war's addictive nature, but it also causes THE HURT LOCKER to lose some steam toward the end.

Bigelow's naturalistic direction is critical to maintaining realism and intensity in the action sequences. The camera is often used as if the photographer is alongside the soldiers. When Bravo Company engages in a firefight with insurgents in the wilderness, the camera hunkers down with the men and keeps to a range as far as their equipment permits them to see. This may sound like an inconsequential or restrictive creative choice, but in this instance pinning the camera to a single spot in the rocky terrain is paramount for conveying screen geography and fostering suspense.

THE HURT LOCKER avoids explicit political statements about whether the United States military's presence in the region is legitimate or unjustified. Implicitly positive or negative readings of the film's stance on the War in Iraq probably reflect the beliefs viewers carry into the theater than what's on screen. This isn't a coward's way out for the filmmakers but rather an acknowledgment of the soldiers' reality. THE HURT LOCKER goes to great pains to present the challenges confronting them and how they function. When staring at several bombs that need to be disarmed, philosophical debates about patriotism or warmongering aren't the most urgent things coming to mind.

Grade: B