A WAR REVIEWED
“A War” wants to accomplish so much. What it gets done with the domestic approach to families torn apart by war commitments is amazing. However, so much of what the film puts onscreen is felled by the effort to cover almost everything possible. The domestic life of the soldier’s family and the impact of his decisions in the Middle East should’ve been the movie. It’s trying to investigate the psych impact of deployment, the measure of war crimes and military judicial methods that leads to three movies being crammed into one. You didn’t have to do that, guys! You had a film that worked and then a ton of cinematic DLC.
I can see how the film picked up a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar nomination. However, was this really the best that Denmark had to offer last year? I have a hard time believing that, especially as their output has been rather stunning for the last decade. I guess their feared keeping the focus on Maria would’ve led people to believe that this was a domestic issues war film. That’s a misstep, but I can see how it happened. I’d still recommend picking it up.
SPECIAL FEATURES
- Interviews
- Featurettes
- Trailer
A/V STATS
- 1.85:1 standard definition transfer
- DTS-HD 5.1 master audio track