War is often glorified in films. From Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore’s famous “I love the smell of napalm in the morning” line in Apocalypse Now to Sergeant First Class William James’ adrenaline-junkie-esque bomb defusing in The Hurt Locker , U.S. soldiers are often depicted as fearless and unwavering. They become symbols of courage, bravery, and democracy in its rawest form.
Restrepo has a much different approach. It is a documentary following a platoon of U.S. soldiers while they secure an outpost in the hostile Korengal Valley of Afghanistan. The soldiers are viewed much less as a collective symbol for courage, but as individuals with emotions. To put it bluntly, they are portrayed as what they really are, human.
The film is in no way is a political statement. While slightly skewed towards the filmmakers’ point of views (as it is expected since they lived with the platoon for one year), Restrepo mainly focuses on the soldiers and how war affects them. The camera crew follows the soldiers as they traverse the desolate and unmerciful mountains. The terrain in Afghanistan is very unforgiving as hiding places and ambush spots are in abundance. Every ledge, cave and boulder has a potential insurgent waiting to claim a U.S. soldier’s life.
With all the supposed resources at the Department of Defense’s disposal, the Restrepo outpost seems almost medieval. Resembling nothing like the U.S. bases in Iraq, the Restrepo outpost looks like a strong wind might knock down its walls. Strategically, the Korengal Valley seems practically useless. Devoid of civilization except for a few villages, the soldiers seem to be sitting in the proverbial beehive of Afghan insurgents. It almost seems as if the United States military forgot about this platoon.
We see the soldiers shoot at the Taliban, search a home for possible insurgents, interrogate civilians, meet with village elders, enjoy some R&R and in some cases, get killed. One soldier dies on camera. The aftermath is chilling. A less intense, but more depressing scene is when the platoon searches a home after a U.S. helicopter drops a bomb on it. Inside, they find several injured people and a dead child. This film is definitely not for the faint of heart.
The soldiers are not hostile, but rather discourteous when dealing with the Afghan people. Complaints about innocent civilians being harmed and demands for payment for eating a villager’s cow are burdened onto the captain of the platoon. Although I am sympathetic to soldiers not being able to be polite all the time after being shot at constantly, it was kind of disconcerting that their behavior would not help mend relations with the Afghan people anytime soon.
Strangely enough, the insurgents the U.S. platoon of the Restrepo outpost constantly fight are never shown. Sure a few dead bodies are discovered, but the insurgents are mostly hidden throughout the documentary. This may have been done on purpose by the filmmakers to portray how hopeless and futile the fight can be for the U.S. soldiers, although it is not entirely out of the question that the filmmakers were hidden during firefights in fear of getting shot.
Restrepo is a raw look into the lives of a U.S. platoon in Afghanistan. Devoid of political motive and commentary, the film focuses entirely on how soldiers try to survive the harsh conditions of the Korengal Valley and the constant barrage of small-arms fire from insurgents. Graphic and disturbing at times, Restrepo will have you questioning the efficiency of the military and the sanity of our troops.
