A Private War - Review

A Private War

Actress Rosemund Pike known for her previous strong performances in “An Education”, “Gone Girl” and “Hostiles” tells the riveting film story based on the book “A Private War”. The real life professional story of American journalist Marie Colvin who worked as a foreign affairs correspondent for the British newspaper The Sunday Times from 1985 until her 2012 death in Homs, Syria during its then and ongoing civil war uprising where 500,000 civilians have died.

Probably more readily recognized for her having a black pirates patch over her left eye, the result of an IED explosion in Iraq, the film focuses largely on Colvin repeatedly going into dangerous environments, time and time again, risking her life to tell the unvarnished truth by reporting on tragic stories of human horror during military conflicts or as she stated in the film “to tell stories when one side or both try to obscure the truth”.

REVIEW: Rosemund Pike is both stupendous and astonishing in her performance and is completely deserving of strong consideration for a Best Actress Nomination. We watch her portrayal of Marie Colvin living her life on the razors edge with very little regard for ever thinking about fear; ever contemplating fear as she worked a perilous journalist life. And when not working in some far away desert she also lived her personal life with the same exposed tough minded determination, not suffering anything less than equal respect from men she worked with or slept with or married. 

Her external persona showed when she is seen chain smoking too much or drinking too much or avoiding bombs too much, she never relented in staring down anything in her way from high society's elite to warlords and to rapid gunfire. Her external persona on the other hand revealed that while she may have been driven by an enduring desire to bear witness as a voice to the voiceless, Colvin appeared to suffer greatly from PTSD from the many mutilated bodies she saw from the ravages of war. And yet she would continue to go back to danger with even more determination than the last, as if on her own she decided to use her PTSD as a drug to keep going further than no man or woman would ever dare to.

Structurally the movie itself occasionally does meander a bit at times early on from being smart dialogue to basic conversational minutia. However, the film running 1:50 minutes does keep growing towards a finale that is quite compelling due to the acting prowess of Rosemund Pike.

In the end the film does capture who Colvin was for about a 12 year period as an immensely brave woman who was committed to justice and who kept tireless working “to make enough people care so as to illicit their humanity into doing something”.

On a lighter note the film also captures her occasional very witty sense humor even when she is discussing her own mortality. When her photographer walks into her hotel room and sees her standing in the mirror getting dressed in dirty blue jeans and a dirty white shirt, he  asks her why she is putting on what is clearly a very clean expensive woman’s bra, Colvin says........”Hey look, when they dig up my corpse from the rubble, I want to make sure they are all impressed”.

3.50 Stars