Why the Iraq Films Are Failing

Politicians and pundits were noisy enough during the first four years of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, but apart from some activist actors, Hollywood was quiet; precious few major films appeared on the Middle East wars. This fall, though, there’s a slew of American movies on the subject: In the Valley of Elah, The Kingdom, Rendition, Lions for Lambs and Redacted–and soon, Badland, Grace Is Gone and Charlie Wilson’s War. Most are worthy; some feature Oscar-winning actors and directors. And so far, all show how tough it is to turn this war into edifying entertainment for the mass audience.

For one thing, this war is tragic but not inherently dramatic. The useful clichés of old war films–capturing a hill from the bad guys, getting an enemy uniform in gun sight, wooing a pretty maiden in a distant land–don’t apply to a conflict on city streets, with the enemy in mufti and the local women off-limits. For another, the number of soldiers at risk in Iraq is, compared with past conflicts, relatively small–a niche market, if you will, like the audience that has paid to see Paul Haggis’ In the Valley of Elah (with Tommy Lee Jones, Susan Sarandon and Charlize Theron) or Gavin Hood’s Rendition (with Reese Witherspoon and Meryl Streep). The first movie, about a man’s search for his soldier son killed after returning from Iraq, was gripping, suspenseful, poignant. Rendition, detailing the torture of an Egyptian American under U.S. auspices, sank under the burden of its plot contrivances. But quality, or lack of it, was irrelevant to audiences. They avoided both films like summer school.

Then again, it’s hard to make a feel-good war movie when a country’s reputation falls as its body count rises. The U.S. hasn’t had a clear, exhilarating win since World War II. (The 1991 Gulf War doesn’t count, since it lasted little longer than Viva Laughlin.) So The Kingdom tried to find an old-fashioned upside by dispatching Jamie Foxx and his FBI team to find the Arabic villains and kill ’em all–a fantasy solution to a real dilemma. And not a big hit.

In Lions for Lambs, Hollywood brought its heaviest star artillery yet to a film about the Iraq mess. Tom Cruise, Streep and Robert Redford (he also directed) were the big guns in a civics lesson that blamed politicians, the media and the public. By doing wrong or doing nothing, we failed our troops, our country and our better selves. Cruise’s first film for his United Artists proved a mission: impossible. It grossed a measly $6.7 million its opening weekend.

The bleakest and toughest of the Iraq films is Brian De Palma’s low-budget, no-star Redacted. Based (like Elah) on an actual atrocity, it takes the form of a multimedia documentary: a mix of simulated TV-news reports, YouTube blogs, video posts and a daily video record of the war, kept by a soldier whose buddies see their sergeant blown up by an IED and go a little crazy. In a long scene that shocks and sickens, they break into an Iraqi home, rape a girl and slaughter her family. An antiwar splatter movie, Redacted ain’t subtle. What De Palma is going for, and achieves, is a mix of edgy ennui and hysteria that could be close to the daily lot of soldiers in Iraq.

An early peek at Charlie Wilson’s War, which opens Christmas Day, suggests that it could be the one war film people will enjoy seeing. Set in the ’80s, it details the efforts of a Texas Congressman (Tom Hanks) to get arms to the mujahedin fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan. The Mike Nichols film, co-starring Oscar winners Julia Roberts and Philip Seymour Hoffman, is at heart a can-do comedy about a wheeler-dealer having a good time doing good. Audiences should have a great time watching it.

As a critic, I give the Iraq films now in release passing marks for good intentions and audiences an incomplete for poor attendance. Although nonfiction directors have tackled the war vigorously, from Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 to Charles Ferguson’s No End in Sight, it looks as if we may have to wait for Hollywood’s definitive Iraq-war film. But that’s the way the movie industry works. In the decade that the U.S. military spent in Vietnam, only a few films surfaced, including John Wayne’s bombastic The Green Berets and De Palma’s anarchic comedies Greetings and Hi Mom! It took years for The Deer Hunter, Coming Home and Platoon to appear and leave their indelible marks. The great Iraq movie–like a solution to the current Iraq quandary–is still a thing to hope for.