A Private War

My wife and I watched this movie at home on DVD from our public library.

Marie Colvin was a real 21st century war correspondent, an American journalist working for a British news agency. She seemingly had no fear, or if she did overcame it to seek out the hottest of the hot spots and when she could, interview dictators with very pointed questions.

Rosamund (pronounced "Rozz-mund") Pike is totally terrific as Marie Colvin, pirate's eye patch and all after she lost her left eye during a raid. Unless we have been in a cave the past 20 or so years we know all the stories, all the big battles, so this movie gives us nothing new there. What it gives us is a glimpse at a driven war correspondent.

The title is significant, "my private war" is a reference to what is going on inside Colvin, what drives her, what makes her put herself and her photographer in the middle of dangerous war zones? We don't quite get the answer clearly but that is what we should be focused on.

Good movie, Pike is very believable. The very end of the movie has a clip of the real Marie Colvin.

This was a film that had a tremendous amount of power. Rosamund Pike's performance was great Jamie Dorman was outstanding, as was Stanley Tucci and many of the other performances in this film.

It was a very heartfelt film about the horrors of war, and the extent to which madmen despots like Gaddafi and Assad will go to maintain their power. I'm not sure why all the dissenting reviews on this thread, it seems like an awful lot of people that were naysayers were politically motivated. Sure, I don't agree with a lot of US foreign policy, but this movie wasn't really about foreign policy, this movie was about the horror of war, this movie was about the bravery and courage of a woman who in my opinion, was near deity, for performing the work that she performed. Let's get real here, how many of the naysayers on this thread would have the guts to actually go into combat territory like she did and do what she did? Probably 2, if that. It is easy to be brave from your living room.

The film deals with war correspondent Marie Colvin (masterfully played by Rosamund Pike), she is an utterly fearless and rebellious spirit, driven to the frontlines of conflicts across the globe to give voice to the voiceless. Assigned by her chief Sean Ryan (Tom Hollander) she travels to the most dangerous places on Earth, to risk her life for the truth, while constantly testing the limits between bravery and bravado. After being hit by a grenade in Sri Lanka, she wears a distinctive eye patch and is still as comfortable sipping martinis with London's elite as she is confronting dictators. Yet, her mission to show the true cost of war leads her - along with renowned war photographer Paul Conroy (Jamie Dornan)- to embark on the most perilous assignment of their lives in the besieged Syrian city of Homs. The Most Powerful Weapon is the Truth !. The greatest weapon is the truth !.

Thrilling and thorny film with fine actors regarding the world of the war correspondents. This tense and nail-biting biograpical thriller is packed with as much taut action , enjoyable message as the storyline will allow , but let down at times due to its slowness and coldness. Engaging and raw film being compellingly shot , adding some political moments and its allegedly wave flag of impartiality cannot obscure the tension dripping from every frame of such reconstructed immediacy. Stars Rosamund Pike who gives a very acting as the brave correspondent who sacrifices loving relationships -to her lover Stanley Tucci- , and over time, her personal life starts to unravel as the trauma she's witnessed takes its toll. The film follows her fruitful career with United Press International (UPI), a year after graduating from Yale. She worked for UPI first in Trenton, then New York and Washington. In 1984, Colvin was appointed Paris bureau manager for UPI, before moving to The Sunday Times in 1985. From 1986, she was the newspaper's Middle East correspondent, and then from 1995 was the Foreign Affairs correspondent. In 1986, she was the first to interview Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi after Operation El Dorado Canyon. Gaddafi said in this interview that he was at home when U. S. planes bombed Tripoli in April 1986, and that he helped rescue his wife and children while "the house was coming down around us".

The movie belongs to sub-genre that abounded in the 80s about reporters all around the world covering dangerous political conflicts , such as Indonesia in ¨The Year of Living Dangerously¨(1982) by Peter Weir with Mel Gibson , Sigourney Weaver, Linda Hunt ; Salvador in ¨Salvador¨ by Oliver Stone with James Woods and James Belushi, Libano in ¨Deadline¨ by Nathaliel Gutman with Christopher Walken and Hywel Bennett and Nicaragua ¨Under fire¨ (1983) shot by Roger Spottiswoode with Nick Nolte, Gene Hackman, Joanna Cassidy .

Adding more biographical data to those already presented in the film, these are the following: Marie Catherine Colvin ( 1956 -2012) was an American journalist who worked as a foreign affairs correspondent for the British newspaper The Sunday Times from 1985 until her death. She was one of the most prominent war correspondents of her generation, widely recognized for her extensive coverage on the frontlines of various conflicts across the globe. On February 22, 2012, while she was covering the siege of Homs alongside the French photojournalist Rémi Ochlik, the pair were killed in a targeted attack made by Syrian government forces. After her death, Stony Brook University established the Marie Colvin Center for International Reporting in her honor. Her family also established the Marie Colvin Memorial Fund through the Long Island Community Foundation, which strives to give donations in Marie's name in honor of her humanitarianism. In July 2016, lawyers representing Colvin's family filed a civil action against the Syrian Arab Republic in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, claiming they had obtained proof that the Syrian government had directly ordered her assassination. In a verdict issued in 2019, the Columbia District Court found the Assad regime guilty of "extrajudicial killing", terming it as an "unconscionable crime" deliberately committed by the government, and mandated Syria to pay Colvin's family $302 million in compensation for the damages.

This film tells the story of a war zone reporter who risks her life repeatedly to tell the truth to the world.

It is a brutal story, and it is very tough to watch. It is a pity that I find the film not add engaging or moving as the filmmakers hoped. Somehow the film comes across as a hybrid between a documentary and a drama, with a passionate protagonist that remains detached at the same time. It is a strange feeling.

"A Private War" is a bit of a mixed bag. On one hand, the "action" scenes are gripping, edge-of-the seat stuff. The theme of 'brave war reporting' is something of interest to me ever since seeing Damien Parer's WWII work. The importance of war correspondents is definitely highlighted here.

On the other hand, the whole thing just felt quite clunky and disjointed. I didn't really learn a whole lot about the conflicts Marie Colvin was reporting on. There was often context missing to scenes and this lead to a little confusion or waning interest on my behalf. Rosamund Pike delivers a strong performance though and it was enough to draw me back in.

There was also just a whole lot of stupidity going on. Sorry, but when one of Marie's colleagues said in the film: "You've got an amazing nose for a story. But you don't have a military brain" - I couldn't help but agree wholeheartedly. It was a frustrating watch at times.

It was a serviceable film though and there's enough here to hold any journalism students' attention. It's important to have journalists of Marie's calbire in our world today.