Matthew Heineman, traditionally a documentary filmmaker, tries his hand in the realm of biographical drama with his newest film A Private War, starring a deathly committed and hardened Rosamund Pike playing the late war journalist Marie Colvin, who most notably covered the siege of Homs in the Syrian civil war. While no doubt a well-conducted tribute to Colvin, the film falls short of becoming a truly great bio-drama because of its inconsistent tonal shifts and lack of contextualization of Colvin’s actions.
The film follows the tribulations of the famed journalist as she hops from war zone to war zone in a valiant attempt at giving a voice to civilians living in the conflicts. Equipped with only a kevlar press vest and a couple of like-minded journalist companions, she puts her life and limb at the hands of insurgents and rebel groups to report what nobody else is willing to. After returning to her home in London, Colvin is mentally plagued by the horrors of war. Images of the dead and dying flash through her mind and permeate every aspect of her life, only to be quelled by an excessive habit of drinking, smoking, and cynicism. Being wounded both physically (having her left eye blown off from the shrapnel of an RPG) and emotionally, she finds it increasingly difficult, yet is ever so compelled, to return to the front.
The most pressing issue I had with the film is its structure, which is made up of distinct segments. There are the segments where Colvin is in the field, writing and reporting on world conflicts in mainly the middle east, and then there are the segments where Colvin is back in her home in London, reliving and struggling with the horrors that she lay witness to. This format, if executed properly, could have worked extremely well. We would not only get to see Colvin’s actions and the effects those actions were having on the world around her, but we would also get to see how she dealt with her personal struggles and PTSD that came with her debilitating job. However, the film instead tries too hard to be a pure character study of Colvin and doesn’t allow any breathing room from a constant switching between offbeat behavior, attitude shifts, and emotional outbursts. It loses sight of what made her such a famed journalist in the first place: her actions. Instead of highlighting the cause Colvin is putting her life towards, and therefore of seeing why what she does actually matters in the grand scheme of things, we are met with internal tirades about the noble and self-sacrificing duties of a war journalist.
Even as a pure character study, the film could have functioned well, but only if we were allowed to grow with Colvin, to see her change, to witness her inner demons morphing or coming to be. From the get-go though, we are introduced to Colvin as someone who already has seen the traumas of war, and the audience is supposed to sympathize and like Colvin at face value, because, after all, who wouldn’t feel sympathy for a war-torn, badass, wise-cracking war journalist? Colvin’s character is nothing more than a one-trick pony. Her one-dimensionality doesn’t foster any inquiry to her actions, her character never evolves, and you are constantly aware of what she is going to do next.
These aspects of the film, do not, however, altogether inhibit its ability to pay tribute to an influential, brave, and rebellious war journalist. The cinematography is nothing short of brutal. Battle sequences aren’t blown out of proportion to action movie heights. Rather, each and every bullet and scream carries a breathtaking weight along with it. I found myself actually holding my breath as the camera flew past broken families and communities, showing true and real-world devastation—not just Hollywood explosions and acrobatic severed limbs. The power and resolve that Colvin displays as she passes enemy checkpoints and reports under mortar shell bombardments is impactful and memorable. The twisted sequences of Colvin going on writing binges, forcing herself to relive the conflicts to tell a story are also beautifully shot. Even though Colvin’s awkward shifts from comedic to dramatic ruin some of the tension and may not work within the scope of the film, they stay true to a person in real life who shrouded her suffering with dark and offbeat humor. She constantly battles with her editor (Tom Hollander) to push for the release of her stories, fighting for their importance and need to be heard. Her cause is evidently noble, and her dedication is admirable.
Overall, the film struggles to tell the story of Marie Colvin in a compelling and meaningful way. While it does a wonderful job of depicting the personal horrors that war journalists experience, it is so general it could almost be about any war journalist. Many of the excellent technical aspects of professional filmmaking are present, and the film feels and plays out in a cohesive manner, but the lack of outside context for the attempted in-depth character study significantly detracts from its success. The movie shows the bravery, will, and fearlessness of Colvin, but falls into a pit of predictability and generalization, which subtracts from the significance of the film’s real-world subject and events.
Score: 3/5