Restrepo documents one American platoon’s wartime experience in Afghanistan.

Credit: Supplied

MOVIE REVIEWS (Week of July 30)

RESTREPO

Directed by Tim Hetherington, Sebastian Junger
Perhaps the only thing more tragic than the lives lost in Afghanistan’s ongoing military mission is the fact that now, almost a decade into the conflict, the incoming casualty reports are being met with increasing indifference. Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger’s harrowing documentary not only adds a human face to the statistics, but offers a searing reminder that war is, indeed, hell.

In assembling Restrepo, the co-directors spent a year imbedded with a U.S. Army platoon stationed in Afghanistan’s treacherous Korengal Valley. In order to secure the strategic area, soldiers erect a new outpost that’s christened ‘Restrepo’ in honour of a fallen comrade. Attempts to make inroads with the locals are scuttled when American mortar shells accidentally kill innocent women and children. Tensions escalate until Operation Rock Avalanche is launched, the offensive flushing the soldiers from the relative safety of their reinforced bunker.

Having been labelled by some as a non-fiction version of The Hurt Locker, Restrepo documents a nightmarish existence that few of us can wrap our heads around, even after a brief glimpse at it. Completely isolated, living like animals, and burning their own feces to keep warm, the soldiers blow off steam by either wrestling or spontaneously slam-dancing to Samantha Fox’s “Touch Me.” All the while, enemy snipers gather in the mountains around them like storm clouds. When combat inevitably erupts, it’s captured in frenetic fashion by Hetherington and Junger’s handheld cameras — likely the closest that most viewers will ever come to catching a bullet.

But it’s not the firefights that entrench themselves in the memory so much as the gut-wrenching interviews with the fighting men. Their pimply faces would have us believe they’re still only boys, but their haunted eyes and quivering voices suggest a part of them has already died. —Curtis Woloschuk

MR. NOBODY

Starring Jared Leto
Directed by Jaco Van Dormael
The central concept of writer-director Jaco Van Dormael’s sci-fi folly shouldn’t be foreign to anyone who’s ever rolled their way through the tangents of a Choose Your Own Adventure book.

Laying on his deathbed in 2092, 118-year-old Nemo Nobody (Jared Leto) looks back at the various lives he could have lived. For instance, his life would have been dramatically different if he’d moved to the U.S. with his mother (Natasha Little) rather than remain in England with his sickly father (Rhys Ifans). Similarly diverse fates await, dependent upon which woman becomes the love of his life. (The candidates are played by Diane Kruger, Sarah Polley, and Linh-Dan Pham.) Whereas one lover would ensure a union of angst and misery, another would inspire him to travel to Mars.

As to which of these realities actually unfolds, Nemo refuses to say. As the film suggests, as long as you don’t make a choice, anything is possible. In this vein, Van Dormael doesn’t self-edit, tossing his every fanciful notion at the viewer in the hope of striking a chord. The hit-to-miss ratio doesn’t reflect on him particularly well: Christophe Beaucarne’s magnificent cinematography simply can’t conceal the fact that we’re being asked to watch nonsense like unicorns prancing around heaven, or to endure countless iterations of tepid romance.

Mr. Nobody’s non-committal approach makes it difficult to attach any significance to a given scene. As a result, the film packs little emotional punch. Van Dormael was obviously trying to create something truly unique and innately lyrical. Unfortunately, he didn’t consider the possibility that his work was simply adding to the world’s surplus of bad poetry. —CW

Dinner For Schmucks

Starring Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, Jemaine Clement, Zach Galifianakis
Directed by Jay Roach
Overextended both financially and romantically, Tim (Paul Rudd), is convinced that the cure-all is a promotion and a corner office. Unfortunately, in order to grasp the brass ring, Tim has to beat out his colleagues in an unusual game that his boss likes to play: Namely, he has to find the biggest idiot and bring them to a fancy company dinner party.
When his girlfriend finds out about the party, she storms off and Tim struggles with his conscience. That is until fate drops a ringer in his lap (or more appropriately onto the hood of his Porsche) when Barry (Steve Carell), a sad sack IRS drone, leaps in to traffic to retrieve a rodent for one of his dioramas.

Inspired by Fracis Veber’s 1998 French comedy smash, The Dinner Game (Le dîner de cons), Schmucks never fully embraces the nasty roots of its predecessor, which was an acerbic, sharply written, and brilliantly acted farce leavened with a dose of heart an topped off with a touch of karmic revenge.

Much to the movie’s detriment, Carell captures Barry’s gormless essence too well: He’s amusing in small doses but quickly grows annoying. Rudd plays his stock in trade, the pathos-ridden-sometimes-amusing character he does in every movie, offering little respite from Carell’s relentless goofiness. Thankfully, Jemain Clement’s nonsense-spewing ‘manimal’ artist-poet and Zach Galifianakis’ take as a mind control expert buoy the silliness quotient leading up to the dinner’s outrageous zaniness. This segment at least proves consistently funny, for the most part.

In spite of flat sections that should have been excised and an overreliance on Carell’s mugging, Dinner For Schmucks delivers genuine laughs and some touching moments. Unfortunately, in true American style, the original story’s darkly comic edge is dulled in favour of a happy ending. Overall, this Dinner only half baked. —Greg Ursic