Rebecca Marshall

The last time I was this disturbed by a movie was in 1979. The movie was Apocalypse Now. I was newly widowed and was trying to figure out my life forward - viewed from a limited life experience - with an upside down heart. I had a male friend who had been a Medic in the Vietnam War and was keenly aware of the movie's impact on him. This movie is altogether different. With 45 years of life experience in my rear view mirror, the impact of this is much much more profound. Riveting, powerful, not gratuitously violent but terrifyingly so, it shows what a true civil war would be like - Americans fighting Americans - from the perspective of journalists. We are used to seeing war-torn images of "other" countries - bodies blurred in foreign lands and unfamiliar landmarks. At the risk of sounding ethnocentric, the realism of seeing our homeland destroyed, our landmarks and cities under seige, our towns strewn with our fellow citizen's bodies is viscerally disturbing, shocking. One particularly, intentionally disturbing scene depicts a press van in the parking lot of a destroyed shopping mall - the obvious symbol of America's consumerism and excesses - next to the carcass of a crashed helicopter. There is no hidden agenda in this movie, but there is a brilliant catch. Which is exactly the point. Highly recommended. Every American should see this.