Loot

At this point of my movie-watching career, documentaries are pretty much all I watch. Still, I was blown away by the raw emotion on screen during "Loot." The film focuses on a modern-day treasure hunter named Lance who works with two separate World War II veterans to try to figure out where exactly they buried their specific treasure some 60 years ago.

In many ways, this film embodies the best of documentary film-making. The camera captures all the action from start to finish, and brings the viewer in during the most critical parts of their adventure. Because the film-maker starts filming at the beginning of the story, he has no idea how the story will turn out - whether it will be a glorious story of 60 year old recollections materializing in the find of a lifetime, or whether it will be a sad tale of lost memories and questionable recollections. The uncertainty of everything makes this film so enjoyable to watch.

And then there are the veterans. While previous commentators have questioned their sanity, I saw nothing but raw human emotion and character. To me, these two men seemed to be eminently truthful and real - while there memories were certainly dusty, they seemed to really believe what they were saying. In the end of the film, the viewer has really grown attached to the men at hand, making the final scenes even more emotional.

All in all, a thoroughly enjoyable tale.

In the beginning we're introduced to a self proclaimed "rainbow chaser" who after making a small fortune fritters it away on phantom gold mines in SE Asia. Very quickly we discover that rather than deal with his personal life and family he'd rather chase the next "big thing". Subsequently through him we meet two World War II vets, both who promise finding looted treasures they had separately hid away during the war before coming home. From there the movie shifts to the slow discovery and uncovering of misremembered and forgotten deeds of our past that may haunt us all our lives and to the grave.

The director filmed and edited over 250 hours of footage shot over 3 years and distilled it down to what we have here. Which at first comes across as a middle age man chasing after dreams of old men who are confused about their pasts and what they've done. To be even more meta one could say the director was chasing his own dream of film making via the treasure hunter. But as the end of the film approaches things solidify into something nearly transcendent.

While there are no real buried chests dug up, what we do find is that time changes everything. It changes us and the world around us. Time can strip away the sharpness of what we remember, and we will easily tint our memories to only remember the good and block out the bad. But the things we've done and choices we make can affect us all our lives until we step up and deal with them. And that might be the real treasure of this film.

This is basically a documentary that is based on real life stories from a WW2 soldier. What is interesting is the Lance character and his quest for buried treasure and the lengths he is willing to go to pursue it. It is interesting movie, I enjoyed it. This is real life, beautifully filmed.