alan-nutter This is a superb movie.As far as the cinematography goes, it is captured in a documentary style which gives it a heightened sense of realism and really draws you into the lives of the people potrayed.It is a movie that perfectly illustrates the fact that there is good and bad on both sides in every large scale conflict.It will be perceived by some as anti-American, but I don't see it that way at all.It is an honest account of true and tragic events that reflect badly on humanity as a whole rather than any particular side.

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.

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.

solaris1968 People who live in denial and believe in the fairy tale of US troops bringing "freedom" to backward Iraqis will hate this movie. But what makes this movie particularly valuable, moving, and powerful is that it humanizes all the participants in the war: US troops, insurgents, and civilians caught up in the crossfire. The director made a genuine effort to show the horrors of war without presenting a simplistic black vs. white, "us" vs "them", opposition. All the protagonists are ordinary people, people who may do horrible things, but people in the end. The insurgents who planted the IED feel remorse at what hey did, and the Marines who killed civilians are also haunted by what they did. And both are ultimately manipulated by their superiors, who really don't care about the suffering on the ground. And the message of the movie is also clear: the root of all this horror is an invasion that should not have happened in the first place.