Battle for Haditha (2007)

In the Fall of 2005, in the village of Haditha, a roadside bomb was used to attack a Humvee and started a chain reaction leading to over two dozen deaths, most of them of Iraqi citizens(and few of them had anything to do with the explosive). That description only provides a superficial idea of what happened, which is why the 85 minute running time(sans credits) of this is devoted to showing all sides of, and properly explore, what went on. This doesn't judge anyone, it shows what happened(and the undisputed facts are followed quite closely, research it if you are unaware). We follow the Marine unit involved, a family celebrating a male circumcision, a young couple in love and the insurgents who buried the IED. The camera-work is not only hand-held, but truly evocative of documentaries(which makes sense, given the director and the intent; this is less a "dramatization" and more a "re-enactment"), and puts you right there in the thick of it all(with a few shots that are simply brilliant; one sequence has someone hiding under a bed when the room is "cleared", and it is shown through POV). This is incredibly absorbing, and unless you go into it with your mind made up and sockets clammed shut(yes, my Summary has a double meaning), you are affected by it. Not because it's manipulative, and it certainly is not propaganda. It isn't pushing any agenda, it's shining a light on a complex issue. This is not pro- or anti-US or terrorism. It's showing that there are human beings, with emotions and history, everywhere in this conflict. It doesn't downplay Al-Quaeda and doesn't glorify the soldiers. The acting is incredible(no exceptions). Ruiz is especially stunning. The focus on improvised dialog(always in the language it should be, with the non-English subtitled), and personal experiences used(several of the main cast have had military careers, some even in the country where this took place) help add to the great level of authenticity. It comes off as natural, unrehearsed(in the good way), real. You really feel the tragedy, without it feeling like emotional porn. The tension is effective. This has a fitting pace, gradually building up to the climax of the situation that we already know the outcome of(from the Times article, for one), and establishing truths, comfortable as well as not, along the way. There is a moderate amount of deeply disturbing, violent and bloody content in this. I recommend this to everyone mature enough to handle it. 8/10

Fmovies: i personally never heard of Mr. Bloomfield, so i had no real intention of watching this film till i saw it mentioned in the message boards for other films. that said, i must say this was the best in the recent slew of Iraq war films (like Redacted, Home of the Brave, etc.) i half expected it to be like Redacted and was pleasantly surprised to find it much better. i think it really brought out the fact that there are multiple sides to a story, and did so without too much bias. being a Muslim myself i must admit that it seemed a little inclined towards Iraqis, with Marines portrayed as undisciplined and emotionless (though one of the protagonists feels guilt and in reality this incident caused an uproar). there are no A-list actors, which in a sense, actually made the movie better because you almost see the actors as the characters themselves (especially since a lot of the dialog is improvised). i think it was well made, and well thought out. better than expected. i wonder what the US reaction would if/when it has a release there? unlike Moore's work (as stated by another user here) neither party is shown as completely innocent or completely evil. i'm not sure if this is exactly how the incident took place, but if it is, then there is certainly some food for thought in this movie.

People who live in denial and believe in the fairy tale of US troops bringing "freedom" to backward Iraqis will hate this movie. But what makes this movie particularly valuable, moving, and powerful is that it humanizes all the participants in the war: US troops, insurgents, and civilians caught up in the crossfire. The director made a genuine effort to show the horrors of war without presenting a simplistic black vs. white, "us" vs "them", opposition. All the protagonists are ordinary people, people who may do horrible things, but people in the end. The insurgents who planted the IED feel remorse at what hey did, and the Marines who killed civilians are also haunted by what they did. And both are ultimately manipulated by their superiors, who really don't care about the suffering on the ground. And the message of the movie is also clear: the root of all this horror is an invasion that should not have happened in the first place.

Battle for Haditha fmovies. I just saw this movie at the Toronto Film Festival, and it's going to create much controversy as the weeks pass until this film finally opens. I think those who are against a movie before they even see it are saying something about themselves, not the film. Watch it, and then make up your mind. This movie, like United 93 or Bloody Sunday, is told moment to moment, keeps it's head down and just moves forward without judgment or commentary. The movie isn't aware of the past or future, it only knows what it knows through the characters we follow, some of whom are American soldiers, some are innocent Iraqi families, others are terrorists. This movie does a wise thing by simply showing things from all points of view. I can't wait until it's released because it needs to be talked about.

At the premiere for the film, we learn that many of the actors on the American front are actually soldiers who fought in Iraq. The head of the platoon is especially good, and could go on and have a career as an actor.

I just saw this movie and found it very moving. I have spent some time with Iraq veterans and I feel this movie did a very accurate job portraying what they went through.

I think it's important to point out that 12 of the actors, including Ruiz, who plays Corporal Ramirez, are themselves Iraq veterans. Here are some quotes from Ramirez: "I was 17 when I was sent to Iraq, during the initial invasion. We pushed all the way up to Tikrit and I ended up being wounded, I almost lost my life. It's crazy, people don't know the type of things that we go through. That's what I like about the film, it shows that." The concept of taking Iraq refugees and ex-marines to make a movie with no script is brilliant. I felt the improvisation from these actors was likely better and more realistic than anything professional actors could have pulled off. I was also impressed with the production values, especially since no US funds were available for a fair and honest portrayal of such events.

In this new film that few in America will see in theaters, the English documentary filmmaker Nick Broomfield has taken his skill set into a narrative feature of an actual event of the Iraq war and dramatized and embellished it with often harrowing realism. Broomfield has humanized an American atrocity, the so-called "Battle for Haditha" of November 19, 2005, in which several dozen Iraqi civilians in the eponymous town were slaughtered by a small squad of Marines in retaliation for a hidden road bomb that killed one of their men and gravely injured two others. Broomfield humanizes everybody. The "insurgents" who plant the bomb, paid to do it by Al Qaida in Iraq people whom they don't trust or like, are a man who was in the Iraqi army destroyed by Paul Bremer, and his grown son, who sells DVD's to American soldiers. The civilians who happen to live near the road where the bomb goes off are seen up close, a child fascinated by chickens, a big family, a circumcision party, a couple with a child on the way who are deeply in love. All these are made real and known to the audience by the film. But so are the Marines, especially the main one, Corporal Ramirez (Elliot Ruiz), who though barely twenty, is so battle-weary he is haunted by dreams and guilt and cannot sleep. It's Ramirez who, cracking under the strain and the sleeplessness and given the go-ahead by corps superiors off somewhere with electronic maps (distant kills are like a video game), leads the rampage of murders, then collapses and weeps when rising for another day.

All this is very interesting, and the killings are similar to those in De Palma's flashy but so very slipshod 'Redacted,' but so very, very different in this new context with the simpler shoot--just a digital camera that you can forget about after a while, whereas De Palma rubs your nose in the multiple media feeds, the other American soldiers less specific here but cruder and perhaps more authentic; some of them like Ruiz were in the war themselves, and served, and know the way to act without being told.

But what is extraordinary in Broomfield's film isn't any of this so much as one thing that typically, American reviewers have hardly seemed to notice. This is: that not only are the Iraqis seen up close, they are real Iraqis, speaking Iraqi Arabic, and many of them, like the young actor who plays Ramirez, also on the other side as victims and non-combatants, veterans of the war, now living where the film was made and where they fled to, in Jordan. When Ramirez shows a big scar on his leg and says he almost lost it, it's Ruiz's real battle scar. Ruiz's performance has a new kind of conviction.

Why would Americans' notice that about the Iraqi Arabic, the authentic Iraqi non-actors playing the roles of insurgents and local inhabitants, and why would they care? In fact even the Choir to whom this anti-war movie is preaching are as ignorant and indifferent to the specifics of Middle Eastern cultural reality as the naive and headstrong men who got us into the war and the poor and uneducated boys who have pursued it and died in it and come back maimed and mentally damaged from it. But in the future, this may come to matter, and even be understood by American Iraq war veterans. Language is important, and culture is important. One shouldn't have to say that. But if it were understood, the imperial indifference of "bringing democracy to the Middle East" would crumble, and it wouldn't seem so easy to think that kill