DVD: Restrepo

This intense, cathartic documentary follows an American platoon to the most feared battlefront in Afghanistan and provides a humbling glimpse of war.

The comedian David Cross once likened the West’s war on terror to waging a war on jealousy – a conceptual absurdity that sounds tough but glosses over the realities of combat. This film presents those realities away from rhetorical posturing, shadowing soldiers from the Second Platoon, Battle Company for a year as they hole up in the most dangerous battlefront in Afghanistan, the Korengal valley. It presents the blunt and brutal consequences of political tough talk.

The film opens with a group of upbeat friends talking into a shaky mobile phone camera, excited about going to war. The most voluble of them is Sgt. Restrepo, a popular soldier with an easy smile. He’s also one of the first soldiers to be killed as the film cuts to Second Platoon entering the valley, where there’s an unseen Taliban stronghold and a civilian population. In the coming days the soldiers work tirelessly around the clock to advance and establish a makeshift base, made of sandbags and corrugated metal. They name their home after their friend Restrepo.

Filmmakers Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger weave footage of the platoon engaged in firefights, the camera remaining remarkably calm amongst the apparent chaos, with later interviews of the survivors. The soldiers’ account of what happened in the year is fascinating and sometimes brutal, but their natural responses to those events are the real revelations. These are not faceless warriors who dispatch their enemy with ease. They’re familiar characters filled as much with fear as braggadocio; they petulantly celebrate the death of their enemy; they remain silent when they accidentally kill the innocent, and they despair when one of their friends is lost.

There’s no hero-worshipping here. With a stark soundtrack consisting of the deceptive firecracker sounds of gunfire with snippets of soldiers playing guitar in moments of calm, we get a blunt report from the frontline, without any heartrending music that could so easily have been added for effect. The truth is harrowing enough.

At the end we are told that US troops withdrew from Korengal valley in April 2010, by which time around 50 soldiers had died there. It’s a testament to this film that after watching it you get a better appreciation of what that statistic really means.

Resrepo is released on DVD 6 December 2010.