Critical MeMe

Time spent watching films, even crappy ones, is time well-spent.

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Location: Oklahoma City, OK, United States
    Post dates are when I watched, parenthetical dates are the year of US release (aka Oscar eligibility).

4/06/2009

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+

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