
Restrepo (2010)
National Geographic cameraman spent a year with U.S. soldiers in middle of the combat in Afghanistan's deadliest valley. We follow the action from the soldier's point of view as the camera is always with them, but there's also interviews cut between it filmed later in Italy. Those interviews explain the feelings and fill in what the camera didn't capture. I thought it was kind of tacky as many of the events that are described in the interviews seem more interesting than the ones captured by the camera. First thing that came to my mind when the men were introduced was that these are all just kids. But I guess that's how it is, fresh meat for the grinder. The documentary captures the modern warfare mentality quite well and all the horrors of it are well present. Weirdly enough the document didn't capture any enemies being killed, only U.S. soldiers and civilian casualties are shown. The only Taliban that's allegedly killed is only shown by a spotter who says so, even the shooter doesn't know wether he killed him or not. Kind of sad picture from the U.S. Army. But that's exactly why the whole concept of that war is seriously idiotic. I have to say I was a bit disappointed at this documentary, I read that it would be one of the best anti-war documentaries but it wasn't anything that special. It used way too often those easy routes to build drama, mostly with the interview parts, I mean if you can't capture it in the battlefield it can be left out. As there were very strong moments captured in the heat of the action, it would have worked brilliantly just with those. Now those interview parts just seem a bit too cheesy. My hat goes off for the maker of this documentary, being up there in the front line with just a camera takes some balls or some sort of a serious mental condition.
65%

Armadillo (2010)
Right from the first shots of this documentary I knew that now we're in a totally different level, this looks absolutely stunning. The documentary follows a Danish platoon for six months in their forward outpost in Afghanistan. At first it looked like it can't compete with Restrepo in intensity as the outpost wasn't in the middle of the action, but I was quite wrong. It actually captures the action and the insanity of war way better than Restrepo did. Again we follow young boys being put through the hell of war but this time the story stays with them on the moment, there are no interview inserts and that works brilliantly. What we see is absolutely devastating, the document doesn't sugar coat the horrors. For example those aerial shots you've seen in the news where missiles hit buildings on the ground, they look quite a bit more shocking when you see the people there who get hit by it. But it's not just long distance fighting, the camera is with the soldiers in the trenches when they get ambushed and when they make their first enemy kills. A scene that raised an uproar in Denmark about the behaviour of the soldiers in a situation where they kill five enemies in a ditch. Again my hat goes off for the crazy film makers who risked their lives to make this. Luckily this time they actually made something very special. It's a shocking and provoking documentary about modern warfare and the insanity of it.
86%
Both of them do serve their purpose, but Armadillo is just in a league of it's own when it comes to which one would be better. So if you can read subtitles watch the Danish one and even if you can't, I'd still recommend it.
1 comment:
Armadillo really blew me away. One of the best war documentaries ever made.
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