The Situation [ 2006 ] Widescreen

Fear and frustration are the emotions which dominate in this movie, a sincere effort to depict the situation is Iraq now, told with restraint and utterly convincingly. There is an air of calm dignity in the telling. The muted colours of the desert landscape are echoed in the muted voices of the protagonists as they try to live normal lives against a background of random gunfire. The kaleidoscope is the ever shifting relationships between all the people involved, The Iraqis are divided along tribal, religious, social lines, not knowing whom to trust, who has power, who will betray whom, and to whom: To them the Americans at least present a recognisable target; for the Americans it is not so easy to identify who, if anyone, to trust.But also among the Americans the rivalries and objectives are at war with one another: the military who want simple targets to blow up and the diplomats striving for a negotiated solution in the face of chaos. In the midst of this is an American journalist Anna (Connie Nielsen) who is trying to find the truth about the murder of an Iraqi boy and assassination of her best contact, and Anna's lover Dan Murphy (Damian Lewis), an intelligence officer whose job, in the face of corruption among the Iraqis and opposition from the military, is to rebuild some semblance of infrastructure with a water filtration plant and a hospital. He is expected by the military to betray the very people he is counting on to get his work done and in the mounting tension between all these groups in which Anna seems to be kidnapped and Dan goes to her rescue the one-time lovers find themselves on opposite sides of a confrontation in which there are, as Dan explained to his junior in the office, no bad guys, no good guys nor shades of grey either, but the truth shifts according to each person you're talking to. His rebuke to his ignorantly opinionated junior is the one attempt to make any philosophical sense of the Situation: "There is no Truth, it's lost in the 4th dimension of time and just when you think you understand it, it's past": a little discourse which for me defines the meaning of the film.The country with its heat, dust, road blocks and queues at petrol pumps, grieving women, children in the street playing with guns amid the ruins, night-time raids and shoot-outs are all photographed by Anna's assistant Zaid an Iraqi Christian, and as Anna becomes more embroiled with the Situation she feels closer to Zaid and alienated from Dan.So Anna and Dan foil each other's best intentions with tragic outcome.The really good die and hope with them, the not-so-good live to fight another day, and Dan is left contemplating the wreckage of his baby incubators which never made it to the hospital which never got built.

Originally released as being one of the first movies to tackle the complexity of the Iraq War, The Situation delivers as it attempts to show the problems through a myriad of viewpoints. Connie Nielsen plays the lead female role as a journalist who has obviously spent too much time in Iraq. There are a lot of different threads running throughout the movie as she investigates the deaths of a young Iraqi boy who is thrown off a bridge by American soldiers. Then the movie proceeds to connect the dots surrounding this horrible incident. Apparently, the boy is from a village ruled by a corrupt chief. One of his henchmen wants to marry the daughter of a man who is not only one of the few decent characters in the movie, but also Nielsen's informant, and he has also has attracted the attention of an American CIA operative convincingly played by Damian Lewis. The latter wants to work with the informant because he is probably the key to establishing stability in that particular area. Lewis's character is admirable. Besides being the boyfriend/lover of Nielsen, he is trying to improve the quality of life in Iraq (Thus winning the hearts and minds of the people.) by any means necessary, but is thwarted by the Army, the State Department, the Iraqis and his own staff.Meanwhile Nielsen chases the story along with a photographer who is a Christian Iraqi and the son of a once prominent Iraqi. When Nielsen's informant/friend is murdered, she seeks revenge by doing "one more story." This leads her to eventually meet the head terrorist who is feared by the corrupt chief. Unfortunately, the meeting sets of a chain reaction that leads to more violence and mayhem. It is a complex story that never mentions issues between the Shiites and the Sunnis, but there is a mutual hatred towards the Kurds. As in most cases, there are good guys and bad guys on both sides, but everyone in some way has sold part of their soul. The actors playing the roles of the Iraqis are brilliant. My two complaints with the movie deal with storyline and sound. For whatever reason, the writers create some pseudo relationship between Lewis and Nielsen's characters, but then the Nielsen becomes drawn to the young Iraqi photographer, who has loyalty issues of his own. Neither is necessary or has a happy ending. The sound problem lies in the fact that there is too much of it, and it is too loud. Throughout the movie you hear gunfire coupled with a heavy soundtrack. The result it drowns out the dialogue in crucial moments of the movie. It is my understanding the movie was done on the cheap, but any good sound editor could easily have remedied this. Granted the gunfire creates the constant tension that runs throughout the movie, and it makes one realize how draining life must be for anyone living in Iraq. It is also understandable why Connie Nielsen's character looks exhausted and burned out. When she lives Iraq in the end, you wonder how she managed to cope so long and why didn't she leave earlier. This is hard movie to watch, especially for Americans. It is impossible for The Situation to have a satisfying ending, but it is an important one because it does touch on the intricate cultural makeup of a country that is now at war with itself.

Connie is a knockout!