Hell and Back Again

It takes a while for HELL AND BACK AGAIN to get started, but when it does it's really a fine film. Switching between scenes of wartime in Afghanistan and struggling at home, the film tells of Marine Sgt. Nathan Harris, shot in the leg rendering him a cripple comparative to his athletic, militant stature previously. In Afghanistan, we see Harris and his crew as a slew of foreigners, trying their best in a bad situation. Interestingly, we see Harris' good intentions go bad. In one scene, the soldiers are moving around things in the city, which seems like tedious work, and I got a little bored. But HELL AND BACK AGAIN works like a sick joke, and then we see a crowd of townspeople come into play, lamenting that the soldiers ruined all their wheat when they were moving things around, broke their furniture, stole their houses for the purposes of...protecting them. In this half of the film, we see that the soldiers are losing the battle because they are fighting for no one. The townspeople don't want their help. And the soldier's idea of helping, is the townspeople's idea of meddling. On top of this idea, is that life in Afghanistan is extremely stressful because now that the townspeople aren't helping, there's little to fall back on or rely on. Shooting could start at any minute, but at home, there's just the tediousness of physical therapy, and a myriad of doctor's appointments. Another quality of HELL AND BACK AGAIN that I deeply admire is the editing and filming of the Afghanistan scenes. They're kinetic and daring, and can be best described by referencing another war documentary, RESTREPO.

★★★ out of Five