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PLOT: Three National Guardsmen volunteer to carry digital video cameras to record their tour in Iraq. At the same time, the filmmakers profile the lives of the women in their lives Stateside.
With cameras embargoed and journalists embedded, the war in Iraq carries on more or less without witnesses -- at least as far as we can tell from the safety of our couches. Unlike Vietnam, Iraq has not been a "living-room war."
That's why The War Tapes, the latest outgrowth of the new docu-trend of giving subjects cameras, is such a revelation. The film, a tour-of-duty diary by three digital-video toting National Guardsmen, offers the first real look at what it's like to be shot at on a daily basis in Fallujah in pursuit of a goal no one can articulate.
Well, that's not exactly true. At least one of the Guardsmen has the Administration's line down, and in the desert straightfacedly recites platitudes about creating a democracy in Iraq that will bloom and spread throughout the Middle East. Then he adds, "I'd also like to buy everybody in the world a puppy." This is not to suggest The War Tapes is anti-Bush propaganda. The opposite, in fact.
Filmmaker Deborah Scranton went through official channels who gave her the green light for her project provided the men volunteered. The National Guard detachment is strongly pro-Dubya at the outset (the 2004 election is underway at the beginning, and only five of the men are said to have voted Democrat).
The three "videographers" are the cynical Sgt. Steve Pink, gung-ho Lebanese American Sgt. Zack Bazzi (who speaks Arabic and becomes the de facto translator in-country) and gung ho specialist Mike Moriarty, practically bursting with post-9/11 patriotism. Without giving away specific details, there are radical turnarounds in some attitudes by the end of the movie.
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The War Tapes begins and ends with its one big bang -- a skirmish in Fallujah that involves at least one American casualty (and several dead insurgents whose open-eyed faces create a haunting image).
It opens with an inspection of a spiderweb-cracked windshield on an armoured vehicle. Turns out the window pane weighs 75 pounds, putting the crack in a much more lethal context. Soon we're on the road, with the vehicle taking hits from nowhere anyone can pinpoint, the camera bouncing frantically.
The daily life is equally compelling, from a scorpion-spider fight the men set up, to a semi-serious debate about whether a severed arm looks more like hamburger or pot roast, to callous statements about the locals, to more pointed political arguments between the men over their mission.
Meanwhile, Scranton's crew is Stateside, interviewing Pink's girlfriend, Bazzi's mom and Moriarty's wife -- providing less sensational segments, but important context for our National Guardsmens' eye-opening journey.
BOTTOM LINE: In an embargoed, embedded Iraq war, this is nothing less than a revelation -- the closest we've seen to the intimate "living room war" footage of Vietnam.
(This film is rated 18-A)