Aside from the historical, political and geographical faux pas of labeling this a "war in Kurdistan", when there are only terrorists fighting inside sovereign Turkey (I know that from all of the broken English protestations on imdb.com), this is an excellent movie.
Two other pieces of trivia I learned from the same source are that:
- To prepare for his role, Colin Farrell (who I thought was already a lucky, skinny bugger) shed 44 pounds to achieve a skeletally-thin appearance, and
- At the age of 86, actor Christopher Lee had to learn more lines of dialog for this role than for any other film he has made before, in a career spanning 60 years and over 300 film and TV productions (I guess everything up until this role had only required stuff like "burn in hell, vampire!")
What started as a film about photo-journalists in a "war" zone, developed into a film about post traumatic stress, and then into an examination of the cold-blooded way in which photographers insist on getting their high-value close-ups of death, with retired psychiatrist Lee (Farrell's father-in-law) helping him through.
One of many heart-rending events he's forced to confront in flashback is a grief-stricken widow in Africa pleading with him to pick out her husband and children from a pile of skulls retrieved from a mass grave.
The analysis unravels to a sad and shocking climax, and I'm surprised so little has been said about this thought-provoking film.
One great line from Lee explains why, as an ardent thrasher, I'm in excellent shape: "You know that when you sleep, you are peaceful, like a baby. That is not good. If you had been thrashing in your sleep, it would mean your problem is near the surface, ready to come out. Peacefulness in a grown man is not a good sign".
A perfect rejoinder to the "stop moving around and go back to sleep" complaints I get so often from Mrs P.
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