This Is War : DVD Review





Title: This Is War
Featuring: Mike Scotti
Director: Kristian Fraga
Certificate: 18
Released: 4th October 2010

‘No point thinking about the future, no point thinking about the past.
It’s all about the here and now, and how many miles to Baghdad’

This is the real life version of The Hurt Locker. It’s an adrenalin-fuelled, visceral portrayal of life in the front line, but then so was The Hurt Locker, Green Zone and Lebanon - A Soldier’s Journey, or even Black Hawk Down, so what’s the difference with This Is War? Well, actually, this really is real.

In July 2002, First Lieutenant Mike Scotti volunteered to extend his service with the American Marine Corps; six months later, he was propelled to the front line of one of the most notorious and complex military campaigns of our time: Operation Iraqi Freedom. Marching through the deserts of a crumbling regime, Scotti records the soldiers’ progress to Baghdad on his personal mini DV-camera. Driven by fear and adrenalin, confronted by Iraqi Paramilitaries and convoys of Republican Guards disguised as civilians, Scotti and his comrades learn that the only people you can trust are members of your own battalion. When his tour was over he passed on his footage and journals to documentary filmmaker Kristian Fraga (Anytown, USA) who edited the content and produced This Is War – a first-hand account of the war as it was fought on the ground.

So real warfare on film, what’s it like? Well at times it’s pretty damn scary, Scotti and his battalion come under fire. Think about playing one of the latest X-Box games such as Halo or Modern Warfare, only this is real, and you might get some idea of what it’s like, only you can’t press re-start if you get killed. The battalion come under fire from gas attacks, threats of scud missiles and gunfire. The film captures the intensity of battle as well as the unease and fear surrounding battle and combat, as well as the fear of waiting or being in a dangerous position on the battlefield. Scenes taken with night vision cameras help the audience to understand the way in which war is waged, it’s not a 9 to 5 day job.

In the chapter entitled Combat we see graphics on screen of the route taken by the US marines into Baghdad through An Nasiriyah and ‘Ambush Alley’ while news reports frequently play over the footage as voiceovers narrating, in a sense, what we are seeing in Scotti’s video footage. There is also a touching letter to an old school friend that conveys sadness at the death of the recipient’s sister after the 9/11 attacks. What is not so touching however are the scenes of soldiers and indeed Scotti himself talking of not caring about the people (soldiers and potentially civilians) killed by missile attacks. Despite rousing speeches, given by commanding officers before troops roll into battle, suggesting that the war being waged is against the Iraqi army led by Saddam Hussain, not the Iraqi people who are living under oppression and need to be liberated, it’s clear that many of the soldiers don’t necessarily believe this or even care about the politics, but are driven to a greater extent by a need for revenge over the 9/11 attacks.

The soldiers clearly believe that they are out in Iraqi to put a stop to attacks such as these and to find weapons of mass destruction and that when they do not only will America be safe but they will have their justification for having invaded a foreign country. Of course they never did find the weapons that they sought and of course now they have moved onto another threat, it will no doubt make viewers wonder if they really believe in their own armed forces or their politicians. Indeed Scotti himself is on record here saying that he would go anywhere his President told him to go in order to protect his country. The fact that his President – then George W. Bush Jr – is and was at the time a complete moron, seems to have eluded him.

War is rarely justified, This Is War will give you a chance to decide whether it was or not in this particular case, although you may not like the answer.

Author : Kevin Stanley