ARMADILLO (Janus Metz). 100 minutes. Some subtitles. Opens Friday (July 1) at the TIFF Bell Lightbox. See listing. Rating: NNNN
After Restrepo and The Tillman Story, there wouldn’t seem to be many new angles from which to consider the war in Afghanistan, but Janus Metz’s searing look at a Danish company’s six-month tour of duty breaks new ground for immediacy and visceral impact. (Some of that is literal Metz doesn’t shy away from images of the dead and wounded.)
Named for the Danish army’s forward base of operations, Armadillo shows us things we haven’t seen before: the awkwardness of negotiating a “fair” price for a farmer’s destroyed poppy fields, the inadequacy of translators in conveying the devastation and grief of the locals, the intensity and confusion of a firefight with Taliban insurgents.
And if the opening shot of backlit helicopters quotes the hallucinatory futility of Apocalypse Now, the final sequence – delving into the confusion and chaos of the battlefield – earns that comparison.
