Although director Philip Haas gives it a good shot, this low-budget special effects war flick will hardly blast a crater in the ‘Saving Private Ryan’ spoiled American public.
Wendell Steavenson’s screenplay is remarkably spot-on in describing the chaos that is the US occupation of Iraq, in large part due to the fact that she served time in the conflict as a reporter living there. She experienced first hand the difficulty of a foreign power attempting to control a people with which it shares neither language nor region.
The main problem is that you never know who around you is friend or foe. The fact that few Americans even speak the language adds to the enormity of the task. The prognosis is not good. But the super-accurate reportage may be lost when combined with the war-flick plot. Fact and fiction have different audiences.
The story begins with an event that Steavenson reported while in Iraq. The event was the accidental drowning of an Iraqi boy thrown off a bridge by US soldiers driven to the ragged edge in a war few of them understand and most admit there is no chance of winning. The boys violated curfew and appealed to the GIs to pass a river crossing. When both were thrown off the shallow bridge to prove a point, one drowned, creating a “situation” in a war that seems to consist almost entirely of “situations.”
Hass (Oscar nominated ‘Angels and Insects’) had not heard of the incident when he contacted Steavenson after reading an article she wrote for Granta Magazine about a young Jihadi. He asked her to write an Iraqi war screenplay and she wrote about what she knew.
Although most war movies are produced well after the conflicts they feature, Haas felt that the immediacy of the story would work in its favor, in opposition to the usual glorification of war that sells tickets based on heroics. The current nature of this war story puts it midway between documentary and narrative fiction and, in fact, it concentrates more on the Iraqi perspective than on American war action.
It is a story of an underground war, fought by subversives who are constantly working both ends against the middle and mediated by a foreign power with few of the tools required to figure it out.
Steavenson’s first hand experience is embodied in the character of reporter Anna Molyneux (Connie Nielsen—Brødre (English title ‘Brothers’) and ‘Gladiator’), an American who, realistically enough, spends her time cruising around in full-coverage Islamic female garb, showing her press credentials when need be like the archetypal Yankee detective flashing his badge to the baddies. She is in a relationship with American intelligence officer Dan (Damian Lewis—Band of Brothers TV mini-series) who continues to parrot the official victory chant although he cannot begin to understand the vengeful buzz around him.
Their relationship is deteriorating as Anna, like the American public, slowly drifts towards the reality of the situation and Dan is blinded by his loyalty to his country.
Into this relationship is thrust Mido Hamada as Zaid, Anna’s Iraqi photographer who sees both sides and plays them as he has to in order to do his job and survive at the same time.
The most interesting and crucial figure is the understated Rafeeq (Nasser Memarzia), the local leader who eschews both war and politics in his efforts to simply stop the killing. He is, of course, doomed.
There is not near as much interest in stopping the war as there is in profiting by it. The local mayor promises to support the American peace effort in return for weapons for his “police.” The stage is set for the civil war that will break out when America finally leaves.
Haas points to influences in John le Carre' and Graham Greene, which come out strongly in the desperate wartime love triangle of Anna, Dan and Zaid and the treacherous intrigues of politics both foreign and domestic. He also cites war movie influences in ‘The Battle of Algiers’ and ‘Full Metal Jacket,’ although his resources prevent him from mounting a legitimate action-war film in the American sense.
If the box office critical explosions and flying arms and legs of special-effects war are absent, the inside look at the war within will be worth the viewing, but only for the politically observant minority.
The Situation
Opens limited USA February 2, 2007. MPAA: Unrated
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