The kill team

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Movie
Original title The kill team
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 2019
length 87 minutes
Rod
Director Dan Krauss
script Dan Krauss
production Adrián Guerra ,
Isaac Klausner ,
Marty Bowen ,
Wyck Godfrey
music Zacarías M. de la Riva
camera Stéphane Fontaine
cut Luke Doolan ,
Franklin Peterson
occupation

The Kill Team is a war drama directed by Dan Krauss . The film premiered on April 27, 2019 at the Tribeca Film Festival . The film is about an American soldier whose unit commits war crimes against the civilian population during the war in Afghanistan , and his increasingly desperate attempt to deal with the situation. The plot is based on the kill team murders in Afghanistan .

action

Andrew Briggman prepares to serve in the United States Army . In his free time, the young man trains in his room. In doing so, he pretends to avoid enemy fire. A toy basketball hoop and his skateboard become weapons of war. Andrew believes he is ready for war and wants to follow in his father's footsteps.

When the 18-year-old was finally sent to Afghanistan in 2009 without knowing exactly what their mission was all about, the leader of his unit was killed by an IED . The new leader, Sergeant Deeks, explains to his subordinates when and why the killing of people is ethically not only justified but also necessary. As soldiers, they are righteous and the battles noble, a notion supported by the everyday sight of mutilated soldiers and anecdotes about normal-looking Arab families driving around cars loaded with explosives. Briggman thus gets into a moral dilemma.

During a mission, the unit's machine gunner, Coombs, shot and killed an Afghan boy who allegedly threw a hand grenade at him. Briggman is shocked. There are more such incidents, which Briggman doubts more and more. Sergeant Deeks, meanwhile, presents himself to his unit as a friendly leader who lets his men get away with illegal things like drug consumption, organizes barbecues, plays video games with them and offers an open ear for all worries and needs. This creates a conspiratorial community that glorifies violence and extensively celebrates every murder. Briggman, however, cannot really fit in with the group and becomes increasingly isolated.

Later, after the unit shot several civilians, Briggman writes this to his father, who then plans to call the CID . One day the CID actually determined based on an anonymous tip against the unit. As Briggman only learns in retrospect, however, it was about drug use. Together with Sergeant Deeks, the men beat Marquez, whom they believe to be the informer, ready for hospital. He then has to go to the hospital for several weeks. Briggman is now finally terrified and fears that a similar fate will happen to him if it is discovered that he talked to his father about the murders. So he even fears for his life when his comrades joke on the shooting range. Later he openly tells Sergeant Deeks that he does not approve of the actions of his team and is subsequently intimidated by them. At the same time, Sergeant Deeks justified the murders by blurring the classic good / bad scheme in the context of an asymmetrical warfare like that in the Afghanistan war.

When the unit is supposed to interview civilians again in a village, Sergeant Deeks once again plans to kill an unarmed man. This time Briggman is also supposed to participate in the crime, which he does after a long hesitation and inner struggle. A little later, Marquez returns from the hospital and explains to Briggman that he had betrayed the entire unit out of revenge. The soldiers, including Briggman, are now arrested by the military police and flown home, where they are awaiting charges.

In the credits, the true outcome of the kill team murders is finally shown: Five soldiers were charged with willful homicide of civilians. Only one soldier pleaded guilty to the negligent homicide and incriminated his staff sergeant. He was eventually sentenced to three years in prison and the Staff Sergeant to life imprisonment.

production

The film was produced by Adrián Guerra , Isaac Klausner , Marty Bowen and Wyck Godfrey .

Directed by Dan Krauss , who also wrote the script. Based on the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival and Independent Spirit Award-winning documentary of the same name, The Kill Team tells the true story of an infantryman in Afghanistan who was implicated in his group's atrocities against civilians. Krauss does not deviate from the facts of the case, but has changed the names of the people, starting with the protagonist Andrew Briggman, whose real name was Adam Winfield. Members of the United States Army in the context of the kill team murders in Afghanistan were referred to as the “kill team” .

The main role of Andrew Briggman was played by Nat Wolff . His father, a former Marine, is played by Rob Morrow . Alexander Skarsgård took over the role of Briggman's superior Sergeant Deeks.

The shooting took place in Fuerteventura , one of the Canary Islands. The Frenchman Stéphane Fontaine acted as cameraman .

The war drama was screened from late April to early May 2019 at the Tribeca Film Festival in the Spotlight Narrative section. In August 2019 it was presented at the Melbourne International Film Festival.

reception

Age rating

In the USA, the film received an R rating from the MPAA , which corresponds to a rating of 17 and over.

Reviews

The film has so far received the approval of 70 percent of all Rotten Tomatoes critics .

Nick Schager of Variety writes that while those who know the story would not learn anything new from the film, Dan Krauss illustrates the literal and moral morass in which one finds oneself in such military situations. So was The Kill Team become an exposé about how honorable, young soldiers have to deal with atrocities. The increasingly disaffected and frightened Nat Wolff and an extremely threatening Alexander Skarsgård help with his malicious smile and relaxed self-confidence that shows that evil sometimes appears in the form of a fatherly friend. He plays Sergeant Deeks as a creepy figure of authority.

John Fink of The Film Stage writes that Krauss turned his 2013 documentary about a family's struggle against military justice into a solid war thriller. The charismatic Sergeant Deeks skillfully builds trust in his young team and with the precision of a child molester. It is impossible to ignore the statements made in his documentary, which was published years before the birth of the #MeToo movement and which, in Fink's eyes, is a study of how powerful, successful and charismatic men get away with heinous crimes, while Briggman and his father had to fight an uphill battle to bring Deeks to justice. The Kill Team is also a study of masculinity that does not illuminate sexuality or sexual identity, but sees killing as evidence of tribal membership.

According to the lexicon of international films, "[the film] provides an honest recapitulation of the events" which "[d] ramaturgically ... sometimes [turns out] a bit cumbersome and ... in the character drawing does not [go] into too much depth."

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Nick Schager: Tribeca Film Review: 'The Kill Team'. In: Variety, May 1, 2019.
  2. ↑ Tribeca Film Festival Announces 2019 Feature Lineup. In: filmmakermagazine.com, March 5, 2019.
  3. ↑ A Cinematic Celebration: Announcing the Feature Film Lineup for the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival. In: tribecafilm.com. Retrieved March 16, 2019.
  4. ^ The Kill Team. In: miff.com. Retrieved July 9, 2019.
  5. ^ The Kill Team. In: Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved August 18, 2020.
  6. ↑ https://thefilmstage.com/reviews/tribeca-review-the-kill-team-is-a-compelling-timely-war-on-terror-psychological-thriller/
  7. ^ The Kill Team. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed August 3, 2020 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used