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.
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