list http://www.spout.com/ Recent community activity around Battle for Haditha on Spout Copyright 2005-9 Spout, LLC Spout RSS http://www.spout.com/images/SpoutLogoRSS.jpg http://www.spout.com/ 136 30 http://www.spout.com/films/Battle_for_Haditha/347665/default.aspx Title: Battle for Haditha
Year: 2007
Director: Nick Broomfield
Plot: The fates of two cultures becomes locked on a tragic collision course in director Nick Broomfield's dramatization of the events that led to the massacre of twenty-four Iraqi men, women, and children by American Marines. A squadron of American soldiers goes speeding across the Iraqi desert in a convoy of armored Humvees, eventually stopping at a local store where the soldiers jump out to stretch and browse the DVD selection. Meanwhile, as the Marines strike up a conversation with the young male clerk behind the counter, two Iraqi men climb into the back of a pick-up truck to get a crash course in IED mechanics. Both the Marines and the Iraqis are simply going about their daily business as usual, just doing their best to survive in a land where war is just another fact of life. For the Marine's it's all about patrolling the desert and waiting for the next bomb to go off. When a roadside IED kills one Marine and wounds two others, the vengeance with which the American soldiers strike back at the locals may cause even the most hard-line warhawks to take pause and consider the true cost of a war which has no end in sight. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
Times Tagged: 1
Number of Lists: 2
Number of blog posts: 4
SpoutRating: 2
]]>Mon, 24 Aug 2009 00:56:52 GMTBattle for Haditha2007Nick BroomfieldThe fates of two cultures becomes locked on a tragic collision course in director <a href="http://www.spout.com/players/P____83168/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Nick Broomfield</a>'s dramatization of the events that led to the massacre of twenty-four Iraqi men, women, and children by American Marines. A squadron of American soldiers goes speeding across the Iraqi desert in a convoy of armored Humvees, eventually stopping at a local store where the soldiers jump out to stretch and browse the DVD selection. Meanwhile, as the Marines strike up a conversation with the young male clerk behind the counter, two Iraqi men climb into the back of a pick-up truck to get a crash course in IED mechanics. Both the Marines and the Iraqis are simply going about their daily business as usual, just doing their best to survive in a land where war is just another fact of life. For the Marine's it's all about patrolling the desert and waiting for the next bomb to go off. When a roadside IED kills one Marine and wounds two others, the vengeance with which the American soldiers strike back at the locals may cause even the most hard-line warhawks to take pause and consider the true cost of a war which has no end in sight. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide1Slightly Tagged (1-5)242http://www.spout.com/ProductImages/s347665.jpghttp://www.spout.com/films/Battle_for_Haditha/347665/default.aspxFilm http://www.spout.com/blogs/perera/archive/2009/5/14/42272.aspx Post By: perera
Post To: perera Blog
Post Date: 5/14/2009 1:41:26 PM
Body: That movie was WAY OFF COURSE!! I was there during that time. The Director must have been a fan of Rep. Murtha! And then to portray our Marines as executioners. The 5 guys in the white sedan were armed and engaging the Marines. They didn't just pull them out and execute them unarmed. Get your facts straight!
]]>Thu, 14 May 2009 17:41:26 GMTpereraperera Blog5/14/2009 1:41:26 PMThat movie was WAY OFF COURSE!! I was there during that time. The Director must have been a fan of Rep. Murtha! And then to portray our Marines as executioners. The 5 guys in the white sedan were armed and engaging the Marines. They didn't just pull them out and execute them unarmed. Get your facts straight! http://www.spout.com/blogs/spoutblog/archive/2009/1/9/39318.aspx Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 1/9/2009 2:00:58 PM
Body: At the cinema, 2008 was the year when it was hip to depart from the moral outrage any conscientious individual might feel about our countries’ on going illegal and immoral war 6,000 miles away. Light satire, be it of the buddy (Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay) or “five minutes in the future, things will be even more remarkably FUBAR” variety (War Inc.) were fashionable. Stop-Loss, much like last year’s ill conceived Lions for Lambs, luke warm Rendition and sneakily powerful In the Valley of Elah, was too sincere for most audience members and a large swath of critics’ taste. On the other hand, did we really need Morgan Spurlock to go looking for Osama Bin Laden? What if he would have found him? That might have been a beheading worth watching. Thankfully the much-maligned documentarian Nick Broomfield, best known for his perpetual work-in-progress (i.e. shoddily constructed), Tragic Musicians of the 90s Docs Kurt and Courtney (1998) and Biggie and Tupac (2002), finally surfaced with a genuinely terrific film. His 2007 TIFF entry Battle for Haditha, a picture that, in perhaps the year’s biggest cinematic surprise given its author’s dubious track record and relative inexperience in the realm of narrative, is so eerily verisimilar that it puts much of what one could accurately call combat cinema to shame. Shot in grainy, fluid 16mm with Jordan doubling for Iraq, and starring non actors culled from local Iraqi refugees and ex-American military personnel, Broomfield’s movie paints a potent and altogether horrifying picture of American military brutality that would be fodder for the knee jerk responses of hawkish pundits if a) it had been seen by anyone; b) if its events weren’t almost entirely drawn from the documented atrocities of November 19th, 2005; and c) if it had been directed by Brian DePalma, whose Redacted could have been this relevant if its director wasn’t so busy navel-gazing and rubbing his bald spot. With a structural conceit that resembles Gus Van Sant’s long build up to tragedy in Elephant (but with much less artifice and showy stylistic hijinks to burn), Battle for Haditha recounts not the 2005 battle for which it’s named (that took place in August of 2005 and featured the death of just about every marine from Brook Park, Ohio), but the massacre of twenty-four Iraqis, fifteen of them confirmed civilian noncombatants, by Americans servicemen out for revenge after a member of their platoon, Corporal Miguel Terrazas, was killed by an IED within the city.  That IED was initially listed as the cause of the fifteen civilian deaths in the military’s official report on the incident, only to be discovered as the mere spark for a clinical retribution on the part of a tired, emotionally scarred and trigger happy platoon. Broomfield paints the soldiers as limited and essentially decent men who, under the right circumstances, are subject to the worst human nature has to offer. The film has a small share of inauthentic-seeming moments, which will always occur when you unleash an inspired non-performer in a set of dire given circumstances and make them create without a safety net. But even in the midst of these moments, the film retains its power to both enrage and enthrall. Especially riveting is former Marine corporal Elliot Ruiz as Cpl. Ramirez, whose rage spills over to needless violence with a ferocity that can be hard to watch at times, but whose vulnerability, his essential optimistic sweetness, breaks your heart. At times the performance seems designed to provoke a Liberal wussie’s worst suspicions about the men who serve us in uniform; in other moments, you completely fall in love with the man. It’s dynamite work, a fully lived-in sensation. That those on both sides of any armed conflict are left wounded and this is no small thing might be Broomfield’s thematic intention, but his film transcends his schematic desires by putting us so equally in the shoes of combatants on both sides. It’s also leisurly enough to glimpse small moments with surprising restraint and unexpected beauty. From he sensuality of a woman removing her hijab to have intercourse and then a quaint shower with her lover, to a soldier watching as children flee their Madrasahs in the wake of the retaliatory massacre, Broomfield reveals himself to be a visual poet, albeit a minor one. The banality of evil is the film’s (and this whole war’s) real subject, but as it floats between the daily routines of the platoon and various groups of Iraqi civilians (and a few insurgents), many of whom we know will not see another day, the film manages to truly put to bed Francois Truffaut’s notion that war cinema is always too visceral to be considered truly pacifist. I’m glad I’ve seen it and, deity willing, I never, ever want to see the real thing. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
]]>Fri, 09 Jan 2009 19:00:58 GMTSpoutBlogSpoutBlog on spout.com1/9/2009 2:00:58 PMAt the cinema, 2008 was the year when it was hip to depart from the moral outrage any conscientious individual might feel about our countries’ on going illegal and immoral war 6,000 miles away. Light satire, be it of the buddy (Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay) or “five minutes in the future, things will be even more remarkably FUBAR” variety (War Inc.) were fashionable. Stop-Loss, much like last year’s ill conceived Lions for Lambs, luke warm Rendition and sneakily powerful In the Valley of Elah, was too sincere for most audience members and a large swath of critics’ taste. On the other hand, did we really need Morgan Spurlock to go looking for Osama Bin Laden? What if he would have found him? That might have been a beheading worth watching. Thankfully the much-maligned documentarian Nick Broomfield, best known for his perpetual work-in-progress (i.e. shoddily constructed), Tragic Musicians of the 90s Docs Kurt and Courtney (1998) and Biggie and Tupac (2002), finally surfaced with a genuinely terrific film. His 2007 TIFF entry Battle for Haditha, a picture that, in perhaps the year’s biggest cinematic surprise given its author’s dubious track record and relative inexperience in the realm of narrative, is so eerily verisimilar that it puts much of what one could accurately call combat cinema to shame. Shot in grainy, fluid 16mm with Jordan doubling for Iraq, and starring non actors culled from local Iraqi refugees and ex-American military personnel, Broomfield’s movie paints a potent and altogether horrifying picture of American military brutality that would be fodder for the knee jerk responses of hawkish pundits if a) it had been seen by anyone; b) if its events weren’t almost entirely drawn from the documented atrocities of November 19th, 2005; and c) if it had been directed by Brian DePalma, whose Redacted could have been this relevant if its director wasn’t so busy navel-gazing and rubbing his bald spot. With a structural conceit that resembles Gus Van Sant’s long build up to tragedy in Elephant (but with much less artifice and showy stylistic hijinks to burn), Battle for Haditha recounts not the 2005 battle for which it’s named (that took place in August of 2005 and featured the death of just about every marine from Brook Park, Ohio), but the massacre of twenty-four Iraqis, fifteen of them confirmed civilian noncombatants, by Americans servicemen out for revenge after a member of their platoon, Corporal Miguel Terrazas, was killed by an IED within the city.  That IED was initially listed as the cause of the fifteen civilian deaths in the military’s official report on the incident, only to be discovered as the mere spark for a clinical retribution on the part of a tired, emotionally scarred and trigger happy platoon. Broomfield paints the soldiers as limited and essentially decent men who, under the right circumstances, are subject to the worst human nature has to offer. The film has a small share of inauthentic-seeming moments, which will always occur when you unleash an inspired non-performer in a set of dire given circumstances and make them create without a safety net. But even in the midst of these moments, the film retains its power to both enrage and enthrall. Especially riveting is former Marine corporal Elliot Ruiz as Cpl. Ramirez, whose rage spills over to needless violence with a ferocity that can be hard to watch at times, but whose vulnerability, his essential optimistic sweetness, breaks your heart. At times the performance seems designed to provoke a Liberal wussie’s worst suspicions about the men who serve us in uniform; in other moments, you completely fall in love with the man. It’s dynamite work, a fully lived-in sensation. That those on both sides of any armed conflict are left wounded and this is no small thing might be Broomfield’s thematic intention, but his film transcends his schematic desires by putting us so equally in the shoes of combatants on both sides. It’s also leisurly enough to glimpse small moments with surprising restraint and unexpected beauty. From he sensuality of a woman removing her hijab to have intercourse and then a quaint shower with her lover, to a soldier watching as children flee their Madrasahs in the wake of the retaliatory massacre, Broomfield reveals himself to be a visual poet, albeit a minor one. The banality of evil is the film’s (and this whole war’s) real subject, but as it floats between the daily routines of the platoon and various groups of Iraqi civilians (and a few insurgents), many of whom we know will not see another day, the film manages to truly put to bed Francois Truffaut’s notion that war cinema is always too visceral to be considered truly pacifist. I’m glad I’ve seen it and, deity willing, I never, ever want to see the real thing. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog http://www.spout.com/blogs/spoutblog/archive/2008/5/8/28378.aspx Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 5/8/2008 6:00:38 PM
Body: I’ve always been conflicted by my hatred for war and my love for war films. But I can’t help being excited by cinematic combat. As Miguel Ferrer says in Hot Shots! Part Deux, “War … it’s fantastic!” Certainly his character is referring to the real-life action, but in a reflexive way he’s talking about war on film (he does break the diegetic space when he utters the statement, after all). And I have to say, in that context, no war film in recent years has been as fantastic as Nick Broomfield’s Battle for Haditha, which opened in New York yesterday. The difficult thing about war films is that, despite often being exciting action movies, they’re about real, tragic situations, even if they’re fictional stories set in an actual war (the opening of Saving Private Ryan is of course the epitome of war films’ ability to be at the same time both affecting and awesome). Broomfield’s film has the additional difficulty of being about a real battle from a war that is still going on. And of course there’s that whole problem of Iraq War films being box office poison lately. But if the viewer is able to forget all that stuff, there’s a chance he or she will find Battle for Haditha totally exhilarating. The film presents a dramatization of the titular incident, in which a number of Iraqi civilians were killed by U.S. marines in a criminally retributive act following an IED attack on a military convoy. In a way, the film’s story parallels the massacre in Platoon, which was also based on a true event, only far more loosely. So, I wonder if Battle would be more popular with the critics (currently it has a low 44% approval on Rotten Tomatoes) and audiences if it was similarly more fictionalized. Actually, Battle may be more fictionalized than it seems to be, but as it is shot somewhat like a documentary by a director well known as a documentarian, it’s easy to get the impression that it’s an accurate account of the incident. Of course, the documentary manner in which the film is shot is more relevant to the Iraq War, from which we’ve seen a surplus of great non-fiction films, than a Platoon-style dramatic war film would be. And like those documentaries, Battle smartly addresses the issues relating to the war, such as the damaged psychology of the soldiers and the cause-effect nature of retaliatory incidents like Haditha. Still, despite its difference in discourse and contexts, it may be enjoyed on the same level as fictional war films like Platoon and Saving Private Ryan (and others). And certainly there are other levels on which to appreciate Battle for Haditha. But I figure that people who appreciate war films for the action aren’t really being targeted, and so I feel it must be pointed out that this is indeed an awesome war film and not another depressing Iraq War film. OK, I guess it is both. And therefore it may be too soon to be taken as mere entertainment. But give it a few years (or a lot of years, depending on when the Iraq War ends), and it could be accepted as being as cool as other war film favorites. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
]]>Thu, 08 May 2008 22:00:38 GMTSpoutBlogSpoutBlog on spout.com5/8/2008 6:00:38 PMI’ve always been conflicted by my hatred for war and my love for war films. But I can’t help being excited by cinematic combat. As Miguel Ferrer says in Hot Shots! Part Deux, “War … it’s fantastic!” Certainly his character is referring to the real-life action, but in a reflexive way he’s talking about war on film (he does break the diegetic space when he utters the statement, after all). And I have to say, in that context, no war film in recent years has been as fantastic as Nick Broomfield’s Battle for Haditha, which opened in New York yesterday. The difficult thing about war films is that, despite often being exciting action movies, they’re about real, tragic situations, even if they’re fictional stories set in an actual war (the opening of Saving Private Ryan is of course the epitome of war films’ ability to be at the same time both affecting and awesome). Broomfield’s film has the additional difficulty of being about a real battle from a war that is still going on. And of course there’s that whole problem of Iraq War films being box office poison lately. But if the viewer is able to forget all that stuff, there’s a chance he or she will find Battle for Haditha totally exhilarating. The film presents a dramatization of the titular incident, in which a number of Iraqi civilians were killed by U.S. marines in a criminally retributive act following an IED attack on a military convoy. In a way, the film’s story parallels the massacre in Platoon, which was also based on a true event, only far more loosely. So, I wonder if Battle would be more popular with the critics (currently it has a low 44% approval on Rotten Tomatoes) and audiences if it was similarly more fictionalized. Actually, Battle may be more fictionalized than it seems to be, but as it is shot somewhat like a documentary by a director well known as a documentarian, it’s easy to get the impression that it’s an accurate account of the incident. Of course, the documentary manner in which the film is shot is more relevant to the Iraq War, from which we’ve seen a surplus of great non-fiction films, than a Platoon-style dramatic war film would be. And like those documentaries, Battle smartly addresses the issues relating to the war, such as the damaged psychology of the soldiers and the cause-effect nature of retaliatory incidents like Haditha. Still, despite its difference in discourse and contexts, it may be enjoyed on the same level as fictional war films like Platoon and Saving Private Ryan (and others). And certainly there are other levels on which to appreciate Battle for Haditha. But I figure that people who appreciate war films for the action aren’t really being targeted, and so I feel it must be pointed out that this is indeed an awesome war film and not another depressing Iraq War film. OK, I guess it is both. And therefore it may be too soon to be taken as mere entertainment. But give it a few years (or a lot of years, depending on when the Iraq War ends), and it could be accepted as being as cool as other war film favorites. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog http://www.spout.com/blogs/spoutblog/archive/2007/10/26/21204.aspx Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 10/26/2007 9:01:36 AM
Body: The Hollywood Reporter predicts Saw IV will open huge this weekend, and Variety concurs. The Variety story is a bit more skeptical as to whether or not this latest installment in “the flagship hardcore horror franchise” can reverse the course on the torture porn down-turn, but THR is looking at the bigger question of “whether the gore-filled sequel can pump some blood into a recently lifeless fall theatrical season.” Variety’s headline says there’s “new life” in pre-strike talks between the WGA and the AMPTP, but the story reads like you literally couldn’t pay the Writer’s Guild not to strike. The Reporter’s headline seems more accurate: “WGA seems unimpressed with new AMPTP proposals.” Kurt & Courtney director Nick Broomfield has hopped from the William Morris Agency to ICM. Broomfield is looking for North American distribution for his second narrative feature in two years, Battle for Haditha, and his new agency has been tasked with aiding that cause. Reason #907 why this Taking of Pelham 123 remake seems like a bad idea: John Travolta. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
]]>Fri, 26 Oct 2007 13:01:36 GMTSpoutBlogSpoutBlog on spout.com10/26/2007 9:01:36 AM The Hollywood Reporter predicts Saw IV will open huge this weekend, and Variety concurs. The Variety story is a bit more skeptical as to whether or not this latest installment in “the flagship hardcore horror franchise” can reverse the course on the torture porn down-turn, but THR is looking at the bigger question of “whether the gore-filled sequel can pump some blood into a recently lifeless fall theatrical season.” Variety’s headline says there’s “new life” in pre-strike talks between the WGA and the AMPTP, but the story reads like you literally couldn’t pay the Writer’s Guild not to strike. The Reporter’s headline seems more accurate: “WGA seems unimpressed with new AMPTP proposals.” Kurt & Courtney director Nick Broomfield has hopped from the William Morris Agency to ICM. Broomfield is looking for North American distribution for his second narrative feature in two years, Battle for Haditha, and his new agency has been tasked with aiding that cause. Reason #907 why this Taking of Pelham 123 remake seems like a bad idea: John Travolta. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/massacre/MemberTagFilms.aspxmassacre
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