What did you like about it?
I loved the settings. It was obviously set in Bhagdad, and despite all the news coverage I never really got a feeling for the city until this movie.
I didn’t like the editing much: I’m tired of the jumpy, hand held stuff. Also, a bunch of scenes shot with grainy high speed film, ho hum.
But I think it probably is pretty close to right about the chaos of the time after the war, the different factions in the USA and the different policies they had in mind.
The Judith Miller character was great. It showed her terrible work habits as a reporter. (Point against: the movie makers had her as a WSJ reporter, not the NY Times.)
The Paul Bremmer character seemed arrogant and out of touch, which again strikes me as fair. (Point against: he’s a defense department guy in the film, in real life he was State Department)
The clear implication of the film is that the Bush administration (or people high up in government) lied and KNEW there were no WMDs in Iraq. I have heard this theory expounded by the left endlessly, but I don’t think it holds water. The movie more or less supports that theory, but I think there is still some ambiguity to it.
The scenes of going through the city, the way the regular Army (good guys) and Spec Ops (bad guys) are portrayed in doing their jobs I thought was pretty realistic (having read many books on Iraq, and having a bunch of friends who’ve been there, but not having been there myslef).
Cetainly it is hard to argue that the after-war was the USA’s finest moment, or that many mistakes were not made.
As an upside the CIA was shown in a favorable light. (Still not common in the movies).
All in all I guess I was able to seperate out some of the obvious biases of the filmakers from the overall story and enjoy it as a movie.
(I also saw “Brooklyn’s Finest” and it was a completely dark, ugly picture with absolutely no redeeming value. Everyone, every single important character (and most of the seconcard characters) are corrupt, depraved, angry, violent, racist and confused. I lived in Booklyn for a few years, it has issues, but it’s no where near that horrible. Now THAT is a really over-the-top leftist deconstruction of our culture!)