Restrepo (2010)

“Restrepo,” a documentary that revolves entirely around one company of American soldiers during a grueling 14-month tour of duty in an especially dangerous part of Afghanistan It is an impressive, one might go so far to say heroic feat of journalism. The filmmakers — Sebastian Junger, an adventurous reporter perhaps best known as the author of “The Perfect Storm,” and Tim Hetherington, a photographer with extensive experience in war zones — call no attention to the situation they have placed themselves in to make this film.
Hanging out with the members of Battle Company in their hilltop outposts in the Korangal Valley between May 2007 and July 2008, Mr. Junger and Mr. Hetherington recorded firefights, reconnaissance missions, sessions of rowdy horseplay and hours of grinding boredom. Afterward, when the tour was done, the filmmakers conducted interviews in which the soldiers tried to make sense of what they had done and seen. There is nothing especially fancy or innovative here, just a blunt, sympathetic, thorough accounting of the daily struggle to stay alive and accomplish something constructive.
Any viewer superficially acquainted with the literature and cinema of modern war will have a sense of the peril and tedium that define a soldier’s daily experience, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have spawned a number of serious and well-made films, both fictional and not. What distinguishes “Restrepo” — which belongs with “The Hurt Locker” on the short shelf of essential 21st-century combat movies — is not only its uniquely intensive focus on a small group of men in a particular time and place, but also its relentless attention to the lethal difficulty of their work.
The setting is the Korangal Valley, a mountainous, sparsely populated area in Eastern Afghanistan that, at least at the time, was seen as a region of prime strategic importance. (American forces withdrew from the valley this April--so shade s of Vietnam--men died trying to gain footholds in places that months later were abandoned). In addition to defending their encampments, the company’s men built a new outpost, and in the midst of regular skirmishes with the Taliban and other insurgents they went about the sometimes confusing business of trying to win hearts and minds of the community they were alternately living with and fighting with. At weekly meetings with local elders and in more informal encounters, the soldiers, led by Capt. Dan Kearney, tried to overcome suspicion and resentment, and to persuade Korangal citizens that the American presence would bring jobs, improved infrastructure and other good things. I felt overwhelmingly that this was work that soldiers are ill-equipped to do--that we need some sor tof combined effort between soldiers and social workers to make real progress.
As someone responsible for mental health for returning veterans, this film gave me an immersion experience in what the stresses of daily life in a combat zone are like, and how hard it would be to transition back to a place with a roof over your head, running water, and no one shooting at you.