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'Korengal' focuses on the postwar lives of a combat team from Afghanistan

( R ) ( Monitor Movie Guide )

'Korengal' is somewhat of a follow-up to Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington's documentary 'Restrepo.'

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Outpost Films and Saboteur Media
Sterling Jones participates in a firefight at OP Restrepo in Afghanistan, in the documentary film 'Korengal.'
  • By Peter Rainer Film critic

“Korengal” is a kind of follow-up to the Oscar-nominated documentary “Restrepo,” in which journalists Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington brought us way inside Afghanistan’s most dangerous outpost. Hetherington subsequently was killed covering the civil war in Libya. 

Junger returns to the fray in “Korengal,” although this film focuses on postwar interviews with many of the same men from the 173rd Combat Team. They hash out the manifold ordeals of their service, but rarely does anything startlingly new emerge – which is not to say that the film doesn’t have value. War is hell and always will be. 

But when one of the soldiers, Misha Pemble-Belkin, comparing serving in Afghanistan to his current civilian life, says “I’d rather be there than here,” you wish the film had dug deeper into this mind-set. Grade: B (Rated R for language throughout and brief nude images)

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