Killing and Dying

By BOB HERBERT
NYT

Boston

In the spring of 2007, American soldiers in the Second Platoon of Battle Company, part of a regiment in the 173rd Airborne Brigade, began a 15-month deployment in the Korengal Valley in eastern Afghanistan. It was one of the most dangerous places in the country.

A feature-length film called “Restrepo” documents the soldiers’ experiences and captures the almost primeval elements — the living, breathing, killing and dying — of a combat tour with a close-up intensity that is, frankly, chilling.

When the guys, many of them unbearably young, show up in the grim, mountainous, sparsely populated landscape, they react with what seems like a combination of awe and dread. One said his mind told him he would die there. Another wondered, “What are we doing here?”

The film, which won the grand jury prize for an American documentary at the Sundance Film Festival this year, was made by Sebastian Junger, an author who wrote the “The Perfect Storm” in the 1990s, and Tim Hetherington, a British photographer. Junger also wrote a book about the Second Platoon’s tour called “War.”

(More here.)

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