Review 496: A Private War

A Private War is a taught, hard hitting, emotionally draining biographical drama film all anchored by a tour de force performance from Rosamund Pike.

Based on the 2012 article "Marie Colvin's Private War" in Vanity Fair by Marie Brenner, Marie Colvin (Rosamund Pike) is a young American journalist who becomes appointed to The Sunday Times for which she begins to travel the world, visiting the most dangerous countries and documenting their civil wars.
After being his by a grenade in Sri Lanka in 2001, she begins to wear a distinctive eye patch and is still as comfortable sipping martinis with London's elite as she is confronting dictators.
Colvin sacrifices loving relationships and over time, her personal life starts to unravel as the trauma she witnesses takes its toll. Yet, her mission to show the true cost of war leads her - along with renowned war photographer Paul Conroy (Jamie Dornan) - to embark on the most dangerous assignment of their lives in the besieged Syrian city of Homs.

The plot is a telling a most remarkable true story and showing us an audience as side of war that we don't normally see on film.
A Private War is primarily a story about journalism, the necessity of journalism, how we tell the truth and how we need people to tell the truth, to get into war torn ares and tell the truth. Those truths may be uncomfortable but if we can expose the horrors of our world, there's less a chance we have of repeating these mistakes.
Marie Colvin was a determined and driven woman who was always pushing to tell the truth no matter how high the risk. She was also bluntly honest to a fault and did what she believed was the right thing even when the right thing was extremely dangerous and life threatening to her.

Director Matthew Heineman's direction is excellent, crafting some intensely shot, war scenes in Sri Lanka, Iraq and Syria and keeping the suspense  the cinematography is brilliant and captures the intensity and danger of war torn Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria as well as their beauty. The scenery is fantastic, the production design (creating the early to late 2000s) is terrific and excellently detailed, the costumes are superb, the score by H. Scott Salinas is beautifully and appropriately sorrowful.

The pacing of this film is astonishing The build up to what would become Marie Colvin's final mission to Homs, Syria is simply tremendous, we as an audience sit there gripped from start to finish eagerly anticipating her impending tragic demise.

The acting is terrific all round, Rosamund Pike & Jamie Dornan are outstanding in this film playing Marie Colvin and Paul Conroy respectively.

Pike in particular, delivers a simply phenomenal performance as Marie Colvin, Colvin was a woman who had just seen way to much horror to the point where she was practically numb to it by the point we as an audience are introduced to her and it's the only life that she knows how to live and can't see any other way of living. She thrived off of the thrill of being in war zones and it got to the point where she was practically defined that lifestyle. Pike also effortlessly infuses Colvin's drive and determination as a journalist to spread the truth.

Jamie Dornan is electric in this film playing freelance photographer Paul Conroy. As well as being a freelance photographer and filmmaker who works in the British media, he also served as a soldier in the Royal Artillery so he has loads of experience in this field.

Tom Hollander is also very strong playing Sean Ryan, foreign editor of The Sunday Times and Marie Colvin's boss.

Stanley Tucci has brief but strong role in this film playing Tony Shaw, Marie Colvin's final partner before her untimely demise, mainly standing out thanks to his own unique brand of charisma,

Faye Marsey, Greg Wise, Corey Johnson & Nikki Amuka-Bird round out the films small cast in small but pivotal parts as people who important in Marie Colvin's personal and professional life.

5/5.

The Anonymous Critic