Restrepo

A film that is beautiful, harrowing, heartbreaking -- and necessary.

Restrepo can be tedious at times and nerve-racking at others, but why shouldn't it be? That's exactly what Junger and Hetherington saw on the front lines, so that's what they show, with very little filter.

Restrepo is an example of photojournalism at its finest.

A gut-wrenching, politically neutral documentary that spends more than a year with a platoon of American GIs in a valley that's been called the most dangerous spot on Earth.

The movie premiered in January at the Sundance Film Festival, too soon to include a tragic denouement: in April the U.S. command surrendered the Korangal Valley to the Taliban.

The filmmakers offer no commentary. We watch. And what we see is explosive, deeply moving and impossible to shake.

Even after experiencing the film, what they've gone through - and how they deal with it - deliberately remains a mystery.

I'm a huge war film and documentary fan and a high school history teacher so I had high expectations about this film and was certainly not disappointed. This was clearly one of the most powerful war movies I've ever seen. I never got a sense that the soldiers or the filmmakers had a clear point of view about the war or their role but that, in and of itself, says much about the overall U.S./Afghanistan policy. I couldn't help but see frightening glimpses of Vietnam, Iraq, and Korea. History certainly repeats itself and we (the U.S.) seemingly never learn our lesson; however, this movie proves that sending young, innocent men into harm's way for cloudy objectives is too often the default and demented policy of a nation too quick with the trigger finger and an egomaniacal attitude. I highly recommend seeing this movie and I intend on showing it to my students when it comes out on DVD.

Fairly fascinating doco about the war in Afghanistan that demonstrates just how futile the whole thing is.

I had read Junger book "War" before I watched the movie and was looking forward to see the soldiers and the mountainous landscapes so well described there. I have to say that the movie left me underwhelmed. It was neither about the situation in Korangal Valley (which would demand some sort of a introduction, maps, narration, analysis of strategic and tactical importance) nor about the troops in one of the most dangerous outposts in the world (which would demand more background on the soldiers, going into the psychology of warfare, PTSD...). The whole thing feels somewhat directionless (maybe as a commentary on the Afghan war) and probably much more so for the viewers who did not read the book. On the positive side, (not counting the great dance number to the immortal tune "Touch Me" by Samantha Fox) you get immersed - the camera is almost always in the middle of action, you can see the bullets flying and feel the explosions. But if you really want to get to know the men of Restrepo, read the book. This does not help much.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

This movie is just boring. If you realize that war **** because people die, you wont see or feel anything new. Movie critics walk on egg shells around the subject of dead soldiers, but it doesn't make it an interesting documentary.