Restrepo

Outpost (O.P.) Restrepo is a shitty little base in the middle of the Korengal Valley, Afghanistan. The post is held up by about eight men. They take fire four to five times a day, every day. They dig trenches, they try to amuse themselves, and they talk to the elders of the nearby town. When the soldiers receive fire, they don't know where it's coming from, so they blindly shoot everywhere in the general vicinity. They have no real plans of what to do, they just know that they have to try to shoot the twenty or so members of the Taliban nearby. This is what we see happen in a masterfully simple documentary shot courageously by Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger. O.P. Restrepo is named after a fallen friend of the soldiers. They remark near the beginning that naming the shitty base after such a great friend might not have been such a good idea. As the film progresses, it becomes more fascinating. We see the silliness in what they're doing. They have no real plans, they're in terrible danger every minute of every day, and the townspeople care more about cows than they do about the war. The soldiers are in terrible shape. They bomb portions where a Taliban member is, and it ends up killing children. In interviews with the soldiers in Italy after leaving Restrepo, we see their horrendous faces so wounded by what they've encountered. They say of documentaries that they show us the reaction of a community to some force. The reaction of these soldiers is fascinating, and well captured. The end of the film is as devastating as everything we've seen before it, and puts everything we've seen under a new light. Restrepo is a noble film.

Restrepo: ✰✰✰1/2