Portia Hilton Blistering performances.

Anoushka Slater While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Juana what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Bob This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Tcarts76 As a film about war, this was a good one. It was low budget and shot in a stylized way. The acting is really well done and it comes off almost as a documentary film (I will get to that in a moment). The filming locations are great (Jordan) the equipotent used in the movie is also pretty true to form. It was a low budget movie with no real known stars, and I give the whole crew, cast, director and everyone involved props for putting together a great movie.Now for the bad news. It is just an anti-American, anti-war propaganda film. That is it. It is a convincing one and they worked really hard to try and make it look as close to a documentary as they could, but it is just propaganda. These events did occur, and I have no real doubt that some Marines may have been guilty of some form of Geneva Convention crimes, but this film sets out with a clear agenda in which a lot of time and effort is put into justifying the actions of insurgents, and trying to give the civilian populations a pass on not reporting insurgent activity. They seem to ignore a lot of what the Marines involved said and pretty much took the Iraqi civilians' words as the honest truth.Towards the end, in order to not make to many fighting men and women angry they even try the new anti-war tactic of trying to pose one of the Marines as a victim. The Anti-war movements choice of spitting on American Soldiers in Veitnam doesn't work anymore so they try to paint our soldiers as victims now.Unless you were there, witnessed what happened, and have no feeling toward one side or the other, don't represent something as fact when to this day we only have conjecture.

meshhead10830-335-710074 There are so many major compromising factors and inaccuracies, I have lost count. The movie in it's essence is fictional in every way. If you do you your research on Haditha you may end up being extremely disappointed at how upside down this movie is.In regards to the undertones of sympathy. The movie does portray actions and reactions from both sides. This is an innocent approach, if it were accurate! You must take into consideration that at the time, the attacks against the marines were conducted by LARGE groups of insurgents. The fabricated thought of a massacre initiated by two insurgents' IED is just obviously unrealistic. This has more sympathetic undertones to the two insurgents as opposed to the marines. Again, this would not be a bad thing if the movie was accurate. All in all it tends to be more sympathetic to the struggles of the insurgent.Another important factor is the over simplification of the story. It is the portrayal of a reaction from one event. Haditha had several events that lead to the mass influx of counterinsurgency. There's a reason why its called the "Battle of Haditha", because it was a battle! Not a little post-IED ambush. There were HUGE amounts of Insurgency and Coalition, hence why it is often compared to Fallujah. The story of Haditha is much more complicated, and it's frustrating that the director summed it up in such a black and white-tunnel visioned fashion.And here's me losing my composure.... For crying out loud people! Don't assume it's factual! It's really not a fair insight. It almost portrays U.S. forces as blood thirsty murderers at the same level as the SS. That's really not the case. Take it from an OIF veteran and just look it up! You didn't have to be there to know how extremely wrong this movie is!

TBJCSKCNRRQTreviews 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

logain78 I put watching this movie off for so long because I basically knew I was going to have mixed feelings about it. This movie means a little more to me (and my family) than most people seeing I am a sibling of someone depicted in the movie. Granted this was just a movie and everyone is entitled to their opinion...it just upset me to see how my sibling was depicted in the film. From knowing my sibling, the director wasn't even close. Pretty sure he would feel the same way if someone depicted one of his family members incorrectly just to make a buck. I find exploiting horrible events to make money disturbing and disgusting. Movie says (synopsis of movie on back of the DVD case) that it was told from different perspectives...I want to know where my sibling and his comrades perspectives were in this movie?! Sigh..some will do anything and everything to make a name for themselves.