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BATTLE FOR HADITHA
Directed by Nick Broomfield
Produced by Broomfield & Anna Telford
Written by Broomfield, Marc Hoeferlin & Anna Telford
Director of Photography, Mark Wolf
Edited by Stuart Gazzard & Ash Jenkins
English & Arabic with English subtitles
UK. 93 min. Not Rated
With Elliot Ruiz, Yasmine Hanani, Andrew McLaren, Matthew Knoll, Thomas Hennessy, Vernon Gaines, Danny Martinez, Joe Chacon, Eric Mehalacopoulos & Jase Willette

It was in all likelihood one of the most horrific days of the war in Iraq. On November 19, 2005, a convoy carrying U.S. Marines was bombed by insurgents. One Marine was seriously injured, and another died. The fellow Marines driving beside them in their Humvees flipped, particularly Corporal Ramirez (Elliot Ruiz), and started shooting at anything and everything. The perpetrators escaped, and by the time the Marines finished, 24 civilians, mostly women and children, were dead. Only one girl survived among an entire family.

After all was said and done, nobody was left unscarred, but what’s remarkable about Nick Brookfield’s film is its raw energy and complexity. We’re not simply shown that the Iraqis are revengeful and totally anti-American, though a few are, like the two ex-members of the dismantled Iraqi army who bomb the Marines with Al-Qaeda-supplied weapons. (They look down on the suppliers as psychotic fanatics.) Even they have their moments of “What have I done?” contemplation. And the Marines aren’t shown as clichéd jarheads (though, as it turns out, some pretty much are).

At its most incendiary and compelling, Broomfield tells this story over the course of only two days as if to encapsulate the occupation. Haditha, as one Iraqi says to another, was once a place for vacationing. Now it’s pretty much a slum which could erupt at any moment, much like any number of cities in Iraq. And there is reason for the soldiers to suspect that there could be imminent attacks or to conduct random searches of houses and at checkpoints. Many Iraqis see the two men plant the bomb, but don’t report it. By the time the bombing occurs, they’re caught in the crossfire.

Broomfield has, on the one hand, a great knack for the cinema vérité approach and a style of improvisation – there was only an outline for the script. (I am certain Broomfield owes a big debt to Gillo Pontecorvo’s masterpiece The Battle of Algiers.) However, the characters, all based on real people, sound programmed (when Ramirez first asks a sergeant for help about his nightmares and lack of sleep, he’s given a textbook reply that feels completely forced). It’s a contradiction to have such stark, blunt realism, with ordinary Iraqis and actual Marines as actors, and dialogue that get screams “message!” in an otherwise masterful work. Jack Gattanella
May 7, 2008