Restrepo

Restrepo has been rattling viewers on the festival circuit for several months, and so its Chicago release—one week after the future of Afghanistan has once again come to the forefront of the news—benefits from uncanny timing. At the very least, it’s hard to imagine a more direct portrait of what a ground fight in Afghanistan looks like. Perfect Storm author Junger decided to shoot the film (along with war photographer Hetherington) while researching his book War, for which he spent five two-week stints with soldiers in the Korengal Valley, often referred to as the most dangerous place on Earth. (Hetherington shot additional footage without Junger.) Restrepo provides insight into the difficulties these troops face, both in terms of winning hearts and minds across such a wide cultural divide (the Americans argue with the locals over the legality of shooting a cow that got mangled in a fence) and, mostly, the impossibility of accomplishing anything in this terrain. Who’s shooting and from where? Is it even feasible to have real objectives here?

The title refers to a new outpost named after a fallen comrade, and the soldiers’ reflections—Hetherington and Junger filmed them as talking heads after the fact—are employed to add structure to what is, unavoidably, a slightly shapeless mass of footage. But any documentary whose filmmakers brave this much gunfire has something powerful to impart. This is a conflict that hasn’t been shown much on screen, and that alone gives the movie value.

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