Touches You

As Good As It Gets

It's complicated... I really like the directing, acting and writing but, there are issues with the way it's shot that I just can't deny. As much as I love the storytelling and the fantastic performance but, there are also certain scenes that didn't need to exist.

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

While many of the reviews were mediocre this time around Junger focused on the Combat Veterans out there. This really drove home many of the emotions and feeling soldiers experience. The boredom, adrenaline, and at times hopelessness and futility. For the general public who has never been in this situation I would recommend watching Restreppo and use that as a reference. For soldiers that have experienced this type of situation, this is the film for you. It was nice seeing many of the same soldiers I served with in this film. The overall flow is very inconsistent and that is really also the way it feels while you are facing time in the suck. There are times when the soldiers are gun ho to the point of zealotry. This is an actual tactic many use to keep themselves moving each and every day. War is a wide plethora of emotions that can change in an instant. This is a real example of just that.

Director Sebastian Junger tries to add more depth to the documentary Restrepo he made with Tim Hetherington. In the meanwhile, Tim dies while filming in Misurata, Libya. This one delves more into the troops' feeling and the war's effectives on them. For me, it touches on too much of the same subject. It's the same place at the same time. Restrepo came earlier and feels more immediate. It was closer to the events and was more visceral. I appreciate the attempt to dive deeper into this world. I would suggest concentrating on one or two characters. It would allow the audience to truly track the development and the change in these troops over time. The footage may not be there but they could do interviews with some of these guys back home. It is eye opening to see everybody say that they rather be back in the Korengal valley. However the movie really needs the 'Where are they now?' segments.

2010's Restrepo brought the Afghanistan War in to peoples' homes, bearing visceral shots and the raw emotion of modern warfare. Photojournalist Tim Heatherington and Sebastian Junger spent ten months with Combat Outpost (COP) Restrepo's "Battle Company" reaping an inordinate amount of footage. More footage than they could place into the first documentary. A year later, Heatherington would be dead; killed by shrapnel whilst covering the 2011 Libyan Civil War. Junger felt that the copious amount of footage leftover from Restrepo lent itself to another film. Thusly, Korengal, a companion film, was born.Where the prior of the pair seemed aimed to illustrate Chris Hedge's 2002 quote, "The rush of battle is a potent and often lethal addiction, for war is a drug, one I ingested for many years," the latter shoots to exploit a more poignant and familial sense from the footage and interviews. For those familiar with Restrepo, do not expect anything revolutionary here. What you will be seeing is footage shot during the same time period (2007-2008) using the same equipment. That said, this is in no way a strike against the film. Junger fares well in his organization of the footage and new interviews. This is an altogether new narrative.As a piece of war journalism, it stands out as a worthy companion piece to the first film, not only elaborating on notions explored in Restrepo's 93 minute running time, but introducing new and arguably more meaningful elements. Junger succeeds in revisiting their footage, and bringing freshness to what could have become a dull supercut of Restrepo's outtakes in another man's hands. It's a damn shame Heatherington wasn't around to see this complete vision of the creation he and Junger set out upon in 2007. These two pictures have set the standard for war journalism, and will hopefully usher in a new era of the discipline.

I just finished reviewing "The Hornet's Nest," another film by a father and son journalist team, and I explained how I wished it was more like "Restrepo" and "Korengal."This follow-up film to Restrepo with the filmmakers embedding with the same platoon at the same OP was equally as engaging as the original, but focused more on the other parts of war that it didn't touch on in Restrepo. This film visited the more psychological part of warfare: the mind games each and every soldier struggles with, being so bored you'd rather be in a firefight just to pass the time, or going out on patrol looking for death because you don't care anymore whether you live or die etc. It's about each soldier's individual psychological struggles and how each deals with them in their own ways.As a journalist, I really appreciated how this film focused entirely on the soldiers and the war, letting the soldiers tell the viewer everything, rather than the filmmakers getting on-camera and explaining it to the viewer. That is where my critique of "The Hornet's Nest" was rather scathing. That film got in the way of itself, cutting back to the journalists constantly so they could get face time with the audience. I'd rather see it done how these filmmakers approached this film and Restrepo, asking the soldiers the questions and letting them answer — letting them supply the narrative, exclusively.This film is a must-see follow-up to Restrepo as they re-embed with the same group of familiar faces for another deployment in the Korengal.