By Linda Winsh-Bolard
Based on a true, but heavily fictionalized, story published in the magazine "Esquire" about a group of journalists, all veterans of the Bosnia war, who decided to track down Serbian war criminal Radovan Karadicz.
The fiction cuts down the adventurous troupe to two veterans and one tag on, the kid of network’s vice-president, who naturally knows nothing abut his son's escapades in Bosnia.
War is addictive, says Duck {Terence Howard} in the introductory narration, the danger, the chance of it, it is all-addictive.
There was once a star reporter called Simon Hunt (Richard Gere) who covered the wars of the world with his trusted cameraman Duck. Then Hunt spoke loudly and passionately about the murders and the doings on the UN forces watching the killings in Bosnia and talked nastily and against the political line - and got the sack. Nobody would touch him after that.
In our world of hands washing hands there is no room for reality, unless big bucks approved the version of the reality before it came out.
So Hunt has become a "has been", the guy whose only tape shown, is the last one made for an American network. In our world, only made in/for USA counts.
But Simon Hunt is still there, older, drunker, more cynical and he has an idea, and a chance to go for it. A chance to get to a war criminal responsible for despicable murder a torture of Bosnian Muslims, called the Fox. Ostensibly just for an interview, quietly he wants to capture him.
Hunt has retained his power of persuasion and manages to get Duck and Benjamin to follow him on this exclusive.
During the journey they get shot at because of unpaid bill, attacked by dwarf, whom Hunt owns money since the war was still on, and who now runs black market, mistaken for the CIA and finally captured by the Fox. We learn a lot about Simon Hunt, and not that little about Duck. Benjamin discovers part of himself nobody knew he had. We also learn about the insanity of wars, of the chance, the brutality, uncertainty and the aftermath. Of wars in general. None of it makes sense, nor is it pretty. But as anyone who had to live in a war torn country would tell you, wars don't make sense, they are not pretty and when they are over nothing has been resolved for the people still living on the same piece of land.
The film is fast, engaging, never stupid, sometimes sharply insightful, sometimes making silly fun, and occasionally quite sentimental. For most of the time it remains very human. The journalists suffer from all imaginable human failings, all the desires, incapability lack of common sense and ambitions and survival instincts. They do want to make point, but making it is more for themselves than for anybody else. They don't really have a political platform; they don't preach or pretend to understand, they have lives to live and lives to remember.
Richard Gere is absolutely convincing "has been" who wants a chance to have a life again. Terrence Howard is just as convincing as the man who essentially sold Hunt down the river for a plush life, and he does not want to lose that life. But at the end-oh, well it does not make sense, it is jut there, and he misses the rush. Benjamin (Jesse Eisenberg) plays the inexperienced sidekick looking to make it big- at least for daddy, dear. At the end, it might be their human irresponsibility rather than their social responsibility that makes them resolve their conundrum, but then, they have always admitted to that.
Diane Kruger in a cameo role is actually believable and her beauty does not diminish her part in the story. As is Ljubomir Kerekes in his part of a villain who doesn't want to be taken for a stupid by arrogant Americans.
There are some really nice shots like the row of mike armed TV cameras aiming at the peace doves released 5 years after the war is over in a country where people are regularly starving, stealing, hating and gunning each other, or the red coca-cola like wall sign: Welcome to Sarajevo.
It is not an accepted presentation of war, or post war suffering; it just might be more than that in a very simple way.
And it is not boring, preaching or overdone. It almost redeems the mark of "indie", as long as you forget the big names.
Written and directed by Richard Shepard, Cast: Terrence Howard, Richard Gere, Jesse Eisenberg, Diane Kruger, James Brolin, Ljubomir Kerekes, Kristina Krepela, Snezana Markovic, Joy Bryant, Goran Kostic, R. Mahalakshmi Devaraj, Mark Ivanir, Zdravko Kocevar, Damir Saban, Dylan Baker
