LouHomey From my favorite movies..

BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Gary The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

Logan By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

magnuslhad All films are the end product of someone's subjective bias. Who you give voice to, who you leave out, who you demonize, who you valorize - it's all subjective. What is authentic and closer to objectivity is a process where you make ethical, humanist choices. BfH does this by showing more than one side, having the Arab character's speak in their own voice, and suggesting culpability lies not only with individuals, but with political and ideological processes. The absurdity of having young, ill-informed, emotional Americans on the frontline of a battle they do not understand and are not invested in is clearly depicted. War was ever thus. The culpability of the viewer is also raised, in our mindless acceptance of the official view of these events that is heavily manipulated. It also asks us to read again films like 'Black Hawk Down' and question their simplistic propaganda message. The filmmaker's docudrama approach is straightforward and effective. Battle for Haditha is a difficult watch, but perhaps a necessary one to understand how we in the West have ended up in our current messed up times.

M Russ The bias of this movie ruins it. Anyone who isn't gullible will quickly catch on to the film-maker's beliefs about the whole situation, and the spin is far too obvious.That aside, this movie still isn't any good. The plot gets a little lost in itself at first, and the meat and potatoes of the film (what should really be the whole film) is basically the second half on. The introduction to our characters tells us very little about them that a far shorter introduction couldn't have, and none of them make any sort of real development through the tale.There's also a general sense of killing for the shock value, and while death is an obvious and major part of any war movie, they took it beyond what the plot necessitated.All in all, skip this movie. Thank me later.

Tcarts76 As a film about war, this was a good one. It was low budget and shot in a stylized way. The acting is really well done and it comes off almost as a documentary film (I will get to that in a moment). The filming locations are great (Jordan) the equipotent used in the movie is also pretty true to form. It was a low budget movie with no real known stars, and I give the whole crew, cast, director and everyone involved props for putting together a great movie.Now for the bad news. It is just an anti-American, anti-war propaganda film. That is it. It is a convincing one and they worked really hard to try and make it look as close to a documentary as they could, but it is just propaganda. These events did occur, and I have no real doubt that some Marines may have been guilty of some form of Geneva Convention crimes, but this film sets out with a clear agenda in which a lot of time and effort is put into justifying the actions of insurgents, and trying to give the civilian populations a pass on not reporting insurgent activity. They seem to ignore a lot of what the Marines involved said and pretty much took the Iraqi civilians' words as the honest truth.Towards the end, in order to not make to many fighting men and women angry they even try the new anti-war tactic of trying to pose one of the Marines as a victim. The Anti-war movements choice of spitting on American Soldiers in Veitnam doesn't work anymore so they try to paint our soldiers as victims now.Unless you were there, witnessed what happened, and have no feeling toward one side or the other, don't represent something as fact when to this day we only have conjecture.

paul2001sw-1 Nick Broomfield made his name directing documentary films about his own failed attempts to make the films he really wanted to make, a strategy that brought steadily decreasing returns. But recently, he has made a pair of outstanding dramatic reconstructions, one about the drowned cockle-pickers in Morecambe Bay, and this film, about an incident in war-torn Iraq, in which the U.S. marines were accused of cruelty and cover-up. 'Battle for Haditha' has a raw, authentic feel to it; it makes David Simon's 'Generation Kill' seem stagy and stately in comparison. Both psychologically and politically, it seems spot-on, with believable motivations for its characters and a frank assessment of the inherent difficulties of the American position. Having not served in the army, I can't say if this is what modern war is really like; but I can believe it. And sadly, I can also believe the film's unspoken message that the war in Iraq will never truly be won.