The results are both fascinating and unexpected. Interspersed with the in-field footage are candid interviews of the soldiers taken from their base in Italy, which reveal a depth to their personalities that strongly encourages us to identify (who wouldn't be disgusted, for example, on hearing that one's next posting would be in an area notorious for its high casualty rate, with an infrastructure so skeletal that one would be forced to burn one's own faeces in order not to alert the enemy?) On the other hand, there are moments when the soldiers discuss their targets with such an alarming lack of humanism that one is inclined to view them as little more than black-hearted killing machines; until, that is, one recognizes that it is this mind-blocking mechanism that is the very proof of their humanity.
More than anything else, the film succeeds in placing us on the level of the soldiers, and as such, it falls more comfortably under the heading of "necessary viewing" than "entertainment." During their one-year deployment to the remote outpost named after a fallen member of their detachment, their struggles are as much taken up with the fight against long stretches of boredom - or winning the hearts and minds of the local villages - as they are with the detection and elimination of a largely invisible enemy. Indeed, some of the most affecting scenes involve watching the soldiers interact with the village elders, from the weekly "shura" that the captain holds to address their concerns, to the large commotion caused by the inadvertent death of a cow.
More reviews at Rotten Tomatoes.
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