Day: May 27, 2014

By Joe Bendel. Stationed in a remote outpost in the Korengal Valley dubbed Camp Restrepo (in honor of a late, beloved medic), the men of the Airborne Brigade’s Battle Company, 2/503 were supposed to be the tip of the spear for the American military in Afghanistan. However, in 2010, the administration decided the spear no longer needed a tip and closed all the American outposts in the deadly Korengal. Through new interviews and previously unseen footage, Sebastian Junger revisits the men featured in his Academy Award nominated documentary Restrepo, analyzing the impact of war on those who fight it in Korengal, which opens this Friday in New York.

Tragically, Junger completed Korengal without his late partner Tim Hetherington, who shot his share of the footage and served as co-director of Restrepo and the subject of Junger’s elegiac tribute documentary, Which Way is the Front Line from Here? In fact, they had always planned a more reflective companion film to Restrepo that would allow audiences to become better acquainted with the men of Battle Company.

So now that Restrepo has been decommissioned, do they miss it? More than you might think. War can be shocking and profoundly unfair, as Junger’s first film with Hetherington documents, but it can also be bracing. Nothing clears the head like a morning fire fight, especially for the athletically inclined. (In a rueful aside, one Airborne infantryman casually observes the Korengal mountain ridge would be “sports paradise” were it not for all the warfare going on.)

However, Junger will not allow ideological viewers to conveniently dismiss the men as adrenaline junkies. That might play a part in their adaptation to the harsh duty conditions, but the men form a strong camaraderie with one another and consciously shield their loved ones from the realities of their service as best they can. They also develop unromanticized opinions of the assorted clan leaders operating within the Korengal. Frankly, they probably have a much better understanding of the country than their current civilian leadership (not that that is a particularly high standard to surpass). Indeed, they sound remarkably grounded, all things considered, despite all they have witnessed.

It is very clear why Junger made his Afghanistan films, including Front Line. They vividly capture the soldiering experience, very definitely including the sudden loss of a brother-in-arms. However, it is fair to wonder what was the purpose of the events they documented, if the strategy can be reversed at the drop of a hat? To Junger’s credit (and Hetherington’s too), the films scrupulously avoid politics, but once the house lights come back up, we exit into a political world.

Always fair to the men who appear in it, Korengal covers the full gamut of human emotions, while opening a window into one of the least forgiving corners of the world. Recommended for general audiences, perhaps even more highly than Restrepo, Korengal opens this Friday (5/30) in New York at the Landmark Sunshine.

LFM GRADE: A-

Posted on May 27th, 2014 at 2:03pm.

By Joe Bendel. To be a jewel thief, you have to talk the talk and walk the walk. Even though Doris Payne was born into a life of poverty and segregation, she never had trouble passing for an elegant society lady. Criminals also have a saying about not doing the crime if you can’t do the time. She takes issue with that one. Nonetheless, she finds herself on trial facing a de facto life sentence in Matthew Pond & Kirk Marcolina’s The Life and Crimes of Doris Payne, which opens this Wednesday at Film Forum.

Doris Payne has been doing this for sixty years. It is easy to forgive, or even applaud her first score, perpetrated solely to finance her mother’s escape from her abusive father. Initially, she capitalized on the “invisibility” of an African American woman from clerks eager to wait on presumably more affluent customers. However, she soon adopted the role a woman of means and position, literally taking her act global.

Some of Payne’s exploits would sound fanciful if she did not have the arrest records to prove them. She has seen the insides of many a prison cell in several countries, but somehow providence always intervened. Unfortunately, providence seems to be running late at her current trial.

Frankly, there is a bit of a disconnect between the heists Payne gleefully describes and her protestations of innocence this time around. Essentially, she falls back on snobbery as a defense, claiming she would never steal from such a gauche store as Macy’s. Yet, from time to time, Pond & Marcolina catch her playing them. As charming and innocent looking as Payne might be, viewers will eventually understand that truth is a movable goalpost for her.

Arguably, Pond & Marcolina could have and should have challenged her more in their interview segments, but it is clear they preferred to print the legend, for good reason. There is something very appealing about Payne, the international woman of mystery, romancing Damon Runyonesque accomplices and evading the Swiss police (all of which is true). We want to enjoy her adventures, investing them with the spirit of a racially conscious Raffles, so it is hard to fault the filmmakers for not following up with the various sales associates who might have been fired or the smaller stores that might have been shuttered due to increased premiums and loss of valuable inventory. Nonetheless, the absence of such deeper digging is conspicuous.

Still, by doc standards, Life and Crimes is unusually entertaining, even when Payne’s sociopathic tendencies peak through. Pond & Marcolina keep the pace brisk, getting a nice assist from Mark Rivett’s retro-groovy score. When it’s over, audiences will definitely keep their hands firmly on their wallets as they file out of the theater. Recommended for fans of true crime and too-true-to-believe documentaries, The Life and Crimes of Doris Payne opens this Wednesday (5/28) at Film Forum.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on May 27th, 2014 at 2:01pm.