Restrepo

I watched the brilliant documentary "Restrepo" on the weekend by photographer Tim Hetherington and the journalist Sebastian Junger. They follow the day to day lives of a platoon of American soldiers in the Korangal Valley in Afghanistan in 2007. A place so dangerous that they faced daily and numerous gun battles, so dubbing the valley the 'most dangerous place on earth'. The alien landscape renders them open targets much of the time, never knowing when the next attack will be. They manage to gain ground and build a small fort which they name 'Restrepo' after one of their own men who dies shortly after arriving.

The tension they face everyday is unbearable, the cameras capture them truckin' on regardless becoming a sort of family in the process. We are shown a disturbingly realistic portrayal of army life including a chilling gun battle where they are almost helpless amid the trees and hilly terrain when they are ambushed by the Taliban, losing one of their best soldiers in the process.

This documentary is really about post-traumatic disorder though and it's heartbreaking to see these young men trying to make sense of what they have seen and though they do not question why they are there we cannot help but feel angry for senseless waste of life on what seems like a doomed mission from the start.