Restrepo (2010)

Watching RESTREPO did not feel like watching a movie; it felt like watching—perhaps for the first time—what is really going on in Afghanistan with our military. We read in the news about embedded journalists and hear their stories when they come home. On occasion, we get a glimpse of reality when a reporter stands in front of an authentic background during a relatively safe moment to report from a war zone.

But RESTREPO is different because it was made in a war zone, and at the height of war. Journalist Sebastian Junger, a writer skilled at making external conflict visceral (as he did with books like “The Perfect Storm”), spent 15 months with a U.S. platoon in Afghanistan during the heaviest fire in the Korengal Valley, which at the time was referred to in the media as the “deadliest place on Earth.” Photographer Tim Hetherington was there with him, and the two capture a raw look at the work that goes into the ongoing daily military operations in the Middle East. They make it clear from the beginning that in this movie, when the audience sees a soldier firing a machine gun, it’s not an exciting part of a cool movie action sequence. Here, it’s true, ugly survival, not something the audience gets excited about.

I find it somewhat difficult to critique RESTREPO as a piece of filmmaking because I look at it more as a piece of journalism. To that end, the film is incredible. As mentioned earlier, there are numerous reports from places like Afghanistan, but this feels like the real deal when you watch it. Of course it is the real deal, but films like “The Hurt Locker” are praised by many for their realism, and RESTREPO makes those films seem a lot more constructed and manufactured.

The film is titled after an outpost created in the middle of a warzone and named after a private from the company who was among the first killed. Private Restrepo was a well-liked soldier, and the other men speak about him with the same hesitation and internal torture that they speak about any others among them who have been injured or worse.

RESTREPO shows glimpses of the soldiers’ down time but, more frequently, follows them in the hard work of doing everything from digging and creating Outpost Restrepo to weekly council meetings with local elders who are upset about what happened to their cows or why their sons were shot. The creation of "OP Restrepo" is considered the most important accomplishment of the men serving in the Korengal region, because it was created square in the middle of a war zone and served as a metaphorical middle finger to the Taliban; it frightened them.

The film intercuts this raw footage with debriefings from a half dozen of the men in the company; some of RESTREPO’s most compelling moments are those when, in interviews conducted after their deployment ended, the men are unable to cleanly articulate the events that transpired. They work hard to hold themselves together. Sometimes they even smile. But they are deeply affected. One soldier says it best: “I can only hope that I’ll learn how to process what happened to me better,” he says (and I’m paraphrasing). “Because I’m never going to forget that it happened.”

I did not perceive this film to be political in any manner. It was without an agenda, unless the agenda was simply to present a reality that’s been largely withheld from the American people. It seemed to me like even the men fighting were less about their political beliefs than they were about their desire to protect, honor and defend each other. More than political, this felt personal.

Junger and Hetherington clearly put themselves in harm’s way to deliver RESTREPO. Junger is certainly known for accepting life-threatening reporting challenges, but this one feels particularly threatening. The courage of the filmmakers is equal to the courage of the soldiers, and it feels to me like the duty of the film-going public to witness their reporting.

The closing minutes of RESTREPO are among the most powerful. In a silent sequence, the directors feature the faces of each of the men interviewed for the film. They stare silently into the camera, and their faces are held on screen for what seems like minutes. One can't help but see the pain in their eyes and wish for the opportunity to personally thank them for their sacrifices. It is a humbling montage.

I have watched many films about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but most of them felt like films, and many had a political slant. RESTREPO is none of that. What it is, instead, is required viewing. And in a year that featured a number of films about tough, depressing subjects that were hard to watch, this one might be the hardest.

4.0 out of 4