Afghan Luke: Verdad Oculta

This is a wonderful little movie. Directed and produced by the same guys as the Trailer Park Boys this is a completely different type of movie. Great work with the muted colours and the dust and dirt of Afghanistan. I don't know how they were able to make BC look like Afghanistan but it is believable and convincing in the movie. It is a little predictable and contrived in parts but the characters are believable and I was hooked in from the very beginning of the movie. The ending however was strong and didn't cave to be a predictable Hollywood want-a-be ending. This movie was easy to watch, easy to understand but still had enough subsistence to allow for great conversations afterwards.

(2011) Afghan Luke DRAMA

Canadian freelance reporter/ journalist, Luke Benning (Nick Stahl) thinks he has witnessed from a distance a well renown Canadian sniper cutting a finger from each of his kills while fighting in Afghanistan. And upon going back to Canada, he tries to get it published, but with no avail he ends up getting fired for wanting to pursue it. So he decides to go back to Afghanistan to that exact same location where it all happened so that he can physically check on the bodies himself. From looking at the big picture, to make it a goal to convict a single person of war crimes, for something as trivial as checking up on people who're already dead and buried, you would've think that would have to be the least of his problems. I still have know idea why that is so important when they're worst things that happened in the war of Afghanistan, such as unreported sexual assaults of women in the military (The Invisible War), freelance shootings by covert operations and then cover up (Dirty Wars), and torture tactics at Guantanamo Bay, road side bombs, Taliban extremists targeting foreigners and Taliban extremists using children as martyrs, and I can go on forever. The other confusing aspect of this movie is the fact that viewers don't have any sense what this movie is about, is it about the reunification of Afghanistan people, the fact that they sell pot to make a living when their is nothing else, or to produce proper sanitation even though Taliban extremists also target foreign aid workers. This movie narrow mindedly addresses a small little problem out of something bigger. And as a result of them doing that, it kind of portray Luke Benning as an annoying douche.

Is this movie worth seeing? It might be. It helps us to understand what our people are going through in a war that doesn't meet any of the traditional definitions. Mateen gives Luke an important quote which essentially means "There are no enemies. Only future allies." The reverse is also true.

And the people are poor and have to do what it takes to get by. Someone is making billions from the drugs, but not these people, and they resent being told what to do by outsiders.

This isn't a comedy, but for those who prefer comedy, there's just enough to make the movie tolerable. The quirky characters are enjoyable. Mateen, who is mostly comic relief, has a chance to be more than that when he experiences a tragedy.

It's not exactly family friendly, with numerous instances of the sound going out and a character's mouth blurred, middle fingers blurred (I assume), and the reality of war. For a movie about war, though, this is not that violent. I actually saw the fourth "Rambo" movie the day I saw this, and that was far worse.

It's not a classic, but maybe if you like war, it's something worth seeing.

"It's a war, my job is to report what I see." When journalist Luke Benning (Stahl) is on a job in Afghanistan he catches a Canadian sniper cutting the fingers off of his taliban kills. When his paper refuses to print the story he quits and returns to the country to investigate further but soon finds that the fighting and tension has become much worse then when he left. There have been a recent influx of "embedded reporter" movies lately but they have all to this point been entertaining. While this was also a good movie and kept me interested it is basically another version of movies like "5 Days To War" or the "Bang Bang Club" (both of which I thought were better). Stahl does a good job and the movie is tense and thought provoking but like so many movies lately it seems to just copy everything else that is being released. I did like this one but "Bang Bang Club" was a better version. Overall, a movie worth watching but a new idea was needed to make it stand out. I give it a B-.

Journalist Luke (Nick Stahl) believes he witnessed a Canadian soldier (a sniper known as Freddy Krueger) cutting off the fingers of a dead Taliban fighter as a trophy and feels this is a crime. No one believes him when he is back at the newspaper in Canada. He feels he must return to Afghanistan and get evidence.

The is a good story, simple and easy to follow. The acting performances and dialogues were spot on, but it was the photography that held me. It was extremely good. The movie was not shot in Afghanistan , but somewhere in Canada and the cinematography was fantastic. How did they do that? Kudos.

His friend Tom (Nicholas Wright) goes with him but is more interested in the high quality of drugs there. His one-time guide, called a fixer, Mateen (Stephan Lobo) constantly changes sides and says something like: Your enemy today is your future ally. And, we witness a War Lord who wants to be a music producer. There is some humor in these sub plots.

This is a different type of war story. Luke is on a mission to find the burial place where the Taliban fighters were shot. Although Luke had been in Afghanistan many times before, he is discovering that things have changed and is now more dangerous and the tension is higher as no one can suspect what will happen next.

This is a film most won't see because the actors are unknown and has a low budget, hence not much promotion. But, if the cinematography held me maybe it will hold you too and the story is a good one.

I know you are probably thinking you know the outcome of Luke's mission, but you don't. However, if you do know the outcome, book yourself on the Psychic tour. You will make a lot of money. The outcome is really good. HA! And, yes, I am ready for a sequel. (7/10)

Violence: Yes. Sex: No. Nudity: No. Language: Yes, many f-bombs.