Battle For Haditha (15.)
Directed by Nick Broomfield.
Starring Elliot Ruiz, Yasmine Hanani, Andrew McLaren, Matthew Knoll, Thomas Hennessey. 95 mins
In Nick Broomfield’s latest venture away from the realms of documentary film making, two strange and utterly alien cultures – the US Marines and Islamic fundamentalist – battle it out amongst a terrified and helpless populace, driven forward by their own unique mindset, language and music.
It recreates the true story of an event known as the Iraq My Lai, when US Marines killed 24 Iraqi civilians, eleven of them women and children, in around their homes in retaliation for a road side bomb that killed one of them. Those that document the tragedies of Iraq often seem to revel in the hopelessness of it all but Broomfield manages to offer something of more value than I told you so.
After more than thirty years behind, and often in front of, the camera it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Broomfield knows how to make a movie but even so I didn’t really expect him to be quite so adept at what we will call, for lack of a better phrase, the “action sequences.”
The shock is that he’s succumbed to that unique male director urge to test his mettle in the heat of a war movie. The film adopts a low key, straightforward approach. There’s lots of handheld camera and it plugs you into his telling of a foregone conclusion. It’s particularly good at showing the way a blood lust will surge up in a person and then gradually dissipate. The film’s most chilling moment is when executioner-in-chief Ramirez (Ruiz) comes out of it, unsure of what exactly he has done.
The Haditha massacre is a predictable target for a left leaning British documentarian but the way he can find so much sympathy for that generic hate figure, the US Marines, is unexpected. At the end you wonder if he mightn’t be a touch too understanding of Ramirez, but then this film doesn’t demonise anyone involved – soldiers, civilians and even the people that plant the bomb are seen as being trapped in a destructive cycle imposed on them from above. All blame gets kicked upstairs.
Directed by Nick Broomfield.
Starring Elliot Ruiz, Yasmine Hanani, Andrew McLaren, Matthew Knoll, Thomas Hennessey. 95 mins
In Nick Broomfield’s latest venture away from the realms of documentary film making, two strange and utterly alien cultures – the US Marines and Islamic fundamentalist – battle it out amongst a terrified and helpless populace, driven forward by their own unique mindset, language and music.
It recreates the true story of an event known as the Iraq My Lai, when US Marines killed 24 Iraqi civilians, eleven of them women and children, in around their homes in retaliation for a road side bomb that killed one of them. Those that document the tragedies of Iraq often seem to revel in the hopelessness of it all but Broomfield manages to offer something of more value than I told you so.
After more than thirty years behind, and often in front of, the camera it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Broomfield knows how to make a movie but even so I didn’t really expect him to be quite so adept at what we will call, for lack of a better phrase, the “action sequences.”
The shock is that he’s succumbed to that unique male director urge to test his mettle in the heat of a war movie. The film adopts a low key, straightforward approach. There’s lots of handheld camera and it plugs you into his telling of a foregone conclusion. It’s particularly good at showing the way a blood lust will surge up in a person and then gradually dissipate. The film’s most chilling moment is when executioner-in-chief Ramirez (Ruiz) comes out of it, unsure of what exactly he has done.
The Haditha massacre is a predictable target for a left leaning British documentarian but the way he can find so much sympathy for that generic hate figure, the US Marines, is unexpected. At the end you wonder if he mightn’t be a touch too understanding of Ramirez, but then this film doesn’t demonise anyone involved – soldiers, civilians and even the people that plant the bomb are seen as being trapped in a destructive cycle imposed on them from above. All blame gets kicked upstairs.
