Guerreros

We often watch world conflicts on TV and think they could never occur in our own country: we're too civilized to surrender ourselves to such brutal behaviour. This thought is one of many that haunts a group of Spanish peacekeepers in the embattled Serbian province of Kosovo. The troops represent a spectrum of personalities: the pacifist, the trigger happy, the professional soldier, the UN translator with conflicting loyalties, the soldier who wants no part of somebody else's conflict and who just wants to go home. As they undertake their duties - rebuilding a Church, restoring electricity to a town - the conflict becomes their reality. They are swept into it, and far from being the placid observers & peacekeepers they think they ought to be, they now must fight for their own survival. They slowly begin to lose that veneer of civilization that they though only they possessed, the same patina these embattled locals once had, but lost long ago. The director based many of the stories on actual events as told to him by Spanish soldiers returning from the region. It is filmed in a very gripping and heavy way - drawing you into it all, along with the lost soldiers. It drew great acclaim at the Toronto International Film Festival, 2002. For those who followed (or survived) the events of the last decade in the Balkans, it is a stark and honest portrayal that will leave many re-thinking the versions they may have formulated in their own minds, reading newspapers and watching TV, comfortable, in their own very civilized, and very insular, homes

There has never been, or at least not in the recent years, a Spanish movie like this one. We are used to certain personal dramas (like Almodovar) or chilling thrillers (like Amenabar´s "Thesis" or "The Others"). In Guerreros, everything turns around the remains of Kosovo´s war and a group of Spanish soldiers that were sent there in a humanitary mission to take control of the situation. Calparsoro discovers us that, in the so-many-times-seen field of war, what it is really important is every man´s personal feelings.

Guerreros is not only a war film. It goes further more than shots, blood or explosions to show us deep inside every soldier´s problems and reactions. You won´t find special effects (like in "Black Hawk Down") but you´ll really suffer as the movie goes on. And you will see how each character evolutionates according to what he sees or feels.

I don´t want to spoil anything from the movie, so I won´t tell any more. If you like war movies, you shouldn´t miss this one. Probably, it will make you think and discover other points of view in a war.

I don't know if directors, screen players or others in the team ever go to analyze the culture of one nation before recording a movie, which has to do with the part of new world history. KFOR troops suffered first victim in 2001, in an accident shooting, and fact is that KLA has never attacked NATO troops, they were allies. Every movie that describes history in a wrong way is to be judged. I have seen the movie out of curiosity, but this production is far far away from qualitative movie. My tip for directors is: before you shoot a movie, analyze the culture of the people first... On the other hand, KFOR soldiers were not positioned in mountains and rural areas of Kosovo, they were positioned in towns, villages and populated areas. Serb soldiers have fled Kosovo one week after KFOR troops marched. If you make a movie just to show the action, then don't use someone else suffering to create so called art, but create a fiction story, don't mess with people feelings, or on the other hand, gather facts and then create a realistic movie, what has happened... but it looks like Spanish troops in Kosovo were partying more than others, and have done a movie just to show how "brave" they are.... pity, shame for world cinematography... Spain is not for action, I say stick with Almodavar

I read these reviews and some seem more concerned that the film be educational and politically correct. This film is fiction, and a damn good story about how people react to stress and loss. It could be ANY WAR, and that is the issue. A EXCELLENT movie about people, and not so much a National Geo special.

The characters are real, the story plausible, and at the end of the day it tells a story of conflict and not to heroic survival.

The film is frank and graphic, I am avoiding spoilers, but you should see this movie. It shows a side of us all that we need to see.

One of the thing that this find does is to put you in the place of the characters, you find yourself asking what would I do.

I think that fortunately spanish cinema is evolving from the obscure era of the "destape" (the first movies that were made after the death of Franco were known like this because most of them were light porn films) and from Almodovar's large shadow.

Guerreros is an entertaining film which makes the audience to question how war is really and how it is showed to us. The film begins with an intense dramatic action scene in which many kosovars are killed by serbian paramilitars. The mission of the platoon is bringing back electrical power to the village and go back home. But finally they get in trouble with the kosovar guerrilla because of the acts of a french captain and almost every french and many spanish die.

They're in the middle of Kosovo without transport, low ammunition and two wounded units.

The history is interesting and it's quite well made from the technical point of view but from the military point of view it's a complete disaster. A disaster because every lieutenant on every army knows how to manage a situation like this; that's why they're lieutenant and not soldiers, platoons never go along the path, and in anyway, all together to give a clear objective to an average shooter.

By the way, some other things are quite well done like the attitude of the sergeant, the way they manage their weapons and how finally they act. That's because they were trained partly by the spanish army and they taught them some things :)

Despite of the military mistakes, it's very entertaining and superb in FX, at least for spanish cinema. As I said in the summary, a hurra for Daniel Carlparsoro.