Sunday, October 19, 2014

Camp X-Ray (2014)

Director: Peter Sattler. Cast: Kristen Stewart, Peyman Moaadi. 117 min. Rated R. Drama.

A new female sergeant at Guantanamo in charge of suspected terrorist "detainees" (not prisoners - otherwise they'd be covered by the Geneva Convention) slowly becomes acquainted with a Pakistani inmate, and becomes disillusioned by his imprisonment. To my knowledge, this is the first feature film on the subject of Gitmo detainees, and as such, the story doesn't take any huge risks. But it does at least make an attempt to bridge the huge ethical gaps, and both Stewart and Moaadi are perfect for their roles. A very borderline Mojo.

Mo says:

4 comments:

  1. SPOILER warning!
    Except a quite cliche scene (of attempt to commit suicide) , the whole movie , story , performances and main concept as you mentioned was beautiful indeed. Agreed and I liked it for sure!

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    1. Glad you enjoyed! But which part of your comment was a spoiler?

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  2. ;))
    The scene of character's attempt to commit suicide!To be spoiler or not to be , that is the question.

    Except cliche ,I feel when a strong character is supposed to be broken , he /she goes through to put in a weak position like to commit suicide and I don't like it because I guess it has a special purpose for that. The similar scene was in Homesman when a strong female personality goes through the same thing !To me I thought at first Tommy Lee Jones has an anti-feminist attitude .Maybe I am wrong but this was what I felt . And also here in this movie when the same happened to a strong male character . He was broken because he was supposed to ...A political, anti-Muslim ,racist ,...whatever reason was hidden behind of that.

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    1. I believe the idea when showing a strong character commit suicide, is to show how much stronger and disastrous the character's burden/trauma was, and not necessarily imply the character was weak. The same is usually done on the opposite side: they show how strong the villain is, so when the good guys overcomes him/her, it indirectly implies the good guy was stronger, not that the villain was weak.

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