Korengal

I just finished reviewing "The Hornet's Nest," another film by a father and son journalist team, and I explained how I wished it was more like "Restrepo" and "Korengal."

This follow-up film to Restrepo with the filmmakers embedding with the same platoon at the same OP was equally as engaging as the original, but focused more on the other parts of war that it didn't touch on in Restrepo. This film visited the more psychological part of warfare: the mind games each and every soldier struggles with, being so bored you'd rather be in a firefight just to pass the time, or going out on patrol looking for death because you don't care anymore whether you live or die etc. It's about each soldier's individual psychological struggles and how each deals with them in their own ways.

As a journalist, I really appreciated how this film focused entirely on the soldiers and the war, letting the soldiers tell the viewer everything, rather than the filmmakers getting on-camera and explaining it to the viewer. That is where my critique of "The Hornet's Nest" was rather scathing. That film got in the way of itself, cutting back to the journalists constantly so they could get face time with the audience. I'd rather see it done how these filmmakers approached this film and Restrepo, asking the soldiers the questions and letting them answer — letting them supply the narrative, exclusively.

This film is a must-see follow-up to Restrepo as they re-embed with the same group of familiar faces for another deployment in the Korengal.

While many of the reviews were mediocre this time around Junger focused on the Combat Veterans out there. This really drove home many of the emotions and feeling soldiers experience. The boredom, adrenaline, and at times hopelessness and futility. For the general public who has never been in this situation I would recommend watching Restreppo and use that as a reference. For soldiers that have experienced this type of situation, this is the film for you. It was nice seeing many of the same soldiers I served with in this film.

The overall flow is very inconsistent and that is really also the way it feels while you are facing time in the suck. There are times when the soldiers are gun ho to the point of zealotry. This is an actual tactic many use to keep themselves moving each and every day. War is a wide plethora of emotions that can change in an instant. This is a real example of just that.

Strangely unengaging documentary.

Korengal follows the lives of a company of US Army soldiers stationed at an outpost in Afghanistan in 2007-8. It is the sequel to Restrepo, which was nominated for a Best Documentary Oscar in 2011.

Maybe it is because I haven't seen Restrepo (yet), but this documentary just doesn't work for me. It doesn't do much wrong - there is a good mix of interviews and live action footage and there is a degree of conclusiveness to it all. Yet I wasn't engaged. The whole thing just seemed to plod along and I didn't feel any real affinity towards the soldiers.

There is also a large degree of gung-ho-ness and bravado, which is a bit off-putting. The movie doesn't feel balanced enough. Maybe that's the problem.

Director Sebastian Junger tries to add more depth to the documentary Restrepo he made with Tim Hetherington. In the meanwhile, Tim dies while filming in Misurata, Libya. This one delves more into the troops' feeling and the war's effectives on them. For me, it touches on too much of the same subject. It's the same place at the same time. Restrepo came earlier and feels more immediate. It was closer to the events and was more visceral. I appreciate the attempt to dive deeper into this world. I would suggest concentrating on one or two characters. It would allow the audience to truly track the development and the change in these troops over time. The footage may not be there but they could do interviews with some of these guys back home. It is eye opening to see everybody say that they rather be back in the Korengal valley. However the movie really needs the 'Where are they now?' segments.

Korengal is a follow up documentary to Restrepo that felt like a lesser continuation that it deserved to be. It wanders around too much with surface level subjects and does repeat some points we've heard or seen in Restrepo. Going back to Korengal valley still blows your mind with how intense and weird that position was. Shooting at distant targets almost everyday. Complete isolation. The mental games that are being played. It's a short fascinating look into a different world.

It makes you understand the guy that would jump back in right away. As we know from war, it's said to be incomparable to anything else in life. The constant fear of death, being surrounded by your brothers, seeing death, delivering it too. It's the most extreme thing you could do in this world.

That said, Korengal did less for me than Restrepo. And ended up feeling too surface level to care much about.