User reviews

This film doesn't cover much of the actual torture that happened in Abu Ghraib but it somewhat gets the picture through. The soldier has a bond with one of the inmates which basically has nothing to do with the movie. You begin to wonder whether the film is about the soldier waiting to go home or his relationship with the inmate. It skips through days and you start to lose track of what was actually happening. The ending was pretty bad didn't explain much, leaves you wondering what happened to the soldier. Had to watch it over a period of two days because I lost interest about half way through but I still wanted to give it another shot and finish watching it, for a debut film is wasn't all that bad, so I would give Luke Moran credit for that.

Just my two cents about this film.

I started watching it and at the beginning it just felt like a childish/overly American movie that would be hard to stay awake for.. But as the movie went on it grew on me.

From feeling extremely mediocre I got to think it was actually decent and when it was over I thought it was quite good. I thought of it as a "unknown gem". Then I go on IMDb and see the ranks.. And it's 5,3 / 10. Really? For me that is a highly mediocre grade and I've seen my fair share of 5 / 10 movies... This is far better.

After quickly scanning what others felt. It's anti-American reviews and "this didn't actually happen" opinions all over the place. But it's a movie! Sure there are movies based on reality and movies that is far from.. But at the end of the day: It's just a movie! I enjoyed it and regardless of what I feel about every move or part in the movie. It made me think of how it CAN be like. Not how it actually is or isn't.

There are many different movies about War and I must say I've seen plenty that isn't as entertaining or as thought-provoking as this one. See it for what it is.

This is an extremely underrated film. Although there are no lengthy or particularly graphic scenes of torture in it, the atmosphere of abuse and fear at the Abu Ghraib prison is excellently conveyed. The acting is brilliant, particularly from Luke Moran. The breakdown of a fundamentally good person into a hardened soldier capable of committing atrocities is portrayed very well, with our sympathies lying of course with the detainees who are being subjected to torture, but also with Jack himself, the one committing torture and abuse. Although the film does not really offer anything new about the atrocities committed at the prison, it is a very human portrayal of the soldiers and it helps us to understand how war affected them to the extent that they ended up committing brutal acts of torture, whereas previously they would have been disgusted by such acts. I found the ending particularly upsetting, although as a whole the film isn't as hard a watch as, say, Taxi To The Darkside or The Road to Guantanamo, which deal with similar themes, due to the audience being able to empathise more with the soldiers in this film.

Everything it's good, I just do not liked that the guy has a friendship with that detainee

A war movie, but without the war, the pain of young people, and the proof of the uselessness of wars ... It reminded me of the excellent "Marked by the War", a little less dramatic and involving... Based on real facts, which gives that tip the most sadness...

I docked 2 stars for the insertion of too much Hollywood nonsense. I have an extended family relative who was both directly and indirectly affected by this ordeal, directly as he was part of the same unit who guarded Abu Ghraib, but not actively at the site, indirectly as it followed him home by people harassing his unit, even though he was not directly involved, it lead to trauma at home, of dealing with the non-sense. So watching this, I expected many of the real life aspects to play out, but the sheer amount of extra bloat, threw me off.

The movie itself was decent, the story line matched most of, if not the entirety of the ordeal itself.