KILO TWO BRAVO
CITY TO CITY D: Paul Katis. UK. 108 min. Sep 14, 9:30 pm TIFF Bell Lightbox 1 Sep 16, 3:45 pm Scotiabank 4. See listings. Rating: NNNN
Effectively tense and utterly unflinching in its depiction of battlefield carnage, Katis’s first feature centres on a 2006 incident in which a dozen British soldiers found themselves trapped in a minefield in Afghanistan, dramatizing the story with a minimum of artistic licence and virtually no mercy.
Kilo Two Bravo – released in the UK last year as Kajaki: The True Story – is admirable for its simplicity and its inexorable narrative, which stays with the protagonists as they deal with their wounded, incur more casualties and keep going under unimaginable stress.
Think Lone Survivor, but without the queasy sense that the filmmakers are enjoying their mounting body count. Indeed, the closest the movie comes to taking any sort of moral stance is in the terrible, terrible song that plays over the end credit montage. Mark Stanley stands out as a medic who wades into the danger zone, but the entire cast is totally convincing.