Restrepo (2010)
Genre: Documentary / War
Duration: 93 minuten
Country:
United States
Directed by: Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger
Starst: Juan "Doc" Restrepo, Dan Kearney and LaMonta Caldwell
IMDb score:
7,4 (24.777)
Releasedate: 25 June 2010
Restrepo plot
"One platoon, one valley, one year"
Directors Hetherington and Junger spend a year with the US Army's 2nd Battalion, nestled in one of Afghanistan's most dangerous valleys. The documentary provides insight and empathizes how the battle must be won through hard work, deadly firefights and mutual friendships while the unit has to push back the Taliban.
Actors and actresses
Reviews & comments
Vinokourov
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- 3143 messages
- 2909 votes
Restrepo seems a bit ordinary, while that can't really be the intention. A platoon of young American soldiers is followed into a godforsaken valley full of Taliban fighters. A camp is built by them and they try to get some rest from a newly built camp (called Restrepo, after a deceased comrade of theirs). Among those soldiers is quite a lot of PTSD material.
This documentary does not want to be really impressive. It is all too bare for that and not everything is explained clearly. You do get a nice impression of the atmosphere of that camp, but it doesn't make you very happy. I found the most fascinating scenes with the Hijar, for example, and older Afghans who talked to each other through an interpreter. I don't think they understood each other half the time. What a world of difference! You therefore wonder whether it was all worth it to be militarily active in that valley for so long.
Lovelyboy
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- 3547 messages
- 2627 votes
Intense documentary with impressive atmospheric images. Especially the unpolished reactions after, for example, one of the firefights, or the reaction of one of the soldiers after the death of Sergeant Rougle, I find soberingly honest in that sense. Rarely seen from so close to such emotions and action. What also grabs me is how they work during Operation Rock Avalanche. The tension can be read from those heads, how quietly they move and the muffled way of talking. And then those shy eyes. That gets me.
Only downside is that it doesn't really feel like they are in the 'most dangerous' place on earth, the Korengal Valley. They all seem to come off very easily.
mrklm
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- 10058 messages
- 9212 votes
Cinematographer and co-director Tim Hetherington died a few months after the release of this documentary from injuries sustained in a mortar attack in the Libyan town of Morata. Hetherington and Sebastian Junger literally find themselves in the line of fire on a number of visits to a unit of The 173rd Airborne Brigade based in the Korengal Valley in eastern Afghanistan. It is known as one of the most dangerous areas in Afghanistan because of the many gun battles that take place there. This first part of a diptych (Korengal, the other part, appeared in 2014) shows how the soldiers deal with the situation on the ground - including during the firefights - and alternates this with studio interviews filmed some time after the return of the surviving soldiers.
Restrepo gives a (relatively) realistic picture of life on the front in a war that, according to the soldiers themselves, hardly yields anything, as well as how the firefights and the lack of trust in the local residents have on their minds. The only way to really understand what soldiers like these go through is to join the fight, but it will be hard to make a documentary that has made such a compelling and penetrating effort.
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