Beyond the Multiplex
by Andrew O’Hehir, Salon.com, February 1, 2007
A compelling Iraq war thriller that will entertain and upset you.
“There’s no truth, you know,” a CIA official tells an idealistic young colleague in “The Situation,” the compelling new Iraq war thriller from veteran indie director Philip Haas. “There are no bad guys and there are no good guys. It’s not gray, either … There’s no truth! It’s lost in the fourth dimension of time.”
Those lines, and the extraordinary monologue by Dan Murphy (played by Damian Lewis) from which they come, express the ambiguity at the heart of “The Situation,” an uneven but impressively ambitious picture that depicts the contemporary Iraq conflict as an existential and moral heart of darkness. Made rapidly and on the cheap (in Morocco), and written by Wendell Steavenson, a journalist who has reported from Iraq, “The Situation” claims the prize of being the first American narrative feature to address the war directly. (Perhaps 20 percent of Irwin Winkler’s “Home of the Brave” is set in Iraq, but that film is principally about soldiers’ difficulties on coming home.) Continue reading Beyond The Multiplex, Salon, February 1, 2007