If it is true that “war is a force that gives us meaning,” that meaning is surely lost on us after viewing “Restrepo,” the new documentary that follows a platoon of U.S. soldiers fighting in Afghanistan's Korengal Valley.


Filmmaker Sebastian Junger stays up close and personal with the 15-man unit, which was stationed from May 2007 to July 2008 in an area considered to be one of the most dangerous in the war. The unit built and manned an outpost “Restrepo,” named for the platoon medic Juan Restrepo, who was killed in action.


The story boils down to a relationship of trust and duty built between the soldiers. They are fighting for their unit and they are fighting against an enemy that most of the soldiers can’t even see in the rolling hills and mountains. We don’t hear any high-flying rhetoric about the enemy; we hear instead a lot of cursing at faceless and nameless people who are shooting at them and so these soldiers shoot right back.


While many current narratives, such as “The Hurt Locker” which won the Academy Award for Best Picture, focus on war as a compelling and addictive drug, “Restrepo” is closer to footage we have seen of old wars, pre-video game wars, where soldiers shoot rifles, bullets fly, men are here in one moment and dead in the next. Just like that. Maybe on the face of one young soldier there is the momentary thrill of firing off a powerful weapon but, more often, the soldiers express dread and anxiety.


After the debacle and tragedy of a trillion-dollar war in Iraq that should not have been fought, the war in Afghanistan is supposed to be the right war. But “Restrepo” shows, a bit of the enormous and some would say futile effort of fighting a moving and faceless target among the mountains.


Click here to post a comment or your own review.

Read and search hundreds of reviews on SeeingBlack.com's Movies/TV channel and archive.

You can order Esther Iverem's critically praised We Gotta Have It: Twenty Years of Seeing Black at the Movies, 1986-2006 (Thunder’s Mouth Press, April 2007)at Amazon.com or purchase at your favorite bookstore. It makes a wonderful gift! Thanks!

Do you shop at Amazon? Please shop through our link and support
SeeingBlack.com!

© Copyright 2006 SeeingBlack.com

Top of Page