Battle for Haditha (2008)

This not-a-documentary-but-masquerading-as-one covers a real-life 2005 incident in which unarmed civilians were slain by a Marine unit panicked after being hit by a roadside bomb. I've seen this stuff before but this is particularly heavy-handed and devoid of any subtlety.

So much of acting is vocal inflection that I've often wondered if I would be able to sort bad actors from good in a foreign language movie. Turns out that question has now been answered and that it's a pretty easy task. Almost everyone in this film is stilted and unbelievable, regardless of the language. It doesn't help that the dialogue is message-heavy (coming from Marines and locals alike) throughout. A mess of a movie that does great disservice to a tragedy.

D+