By Richard Roeper
Movie Review
A Private War
Directed by Matthew Heineman
MARIE COLVIN was one of the great combat correspondents of our time, covering conflicts everywhere from Chechnya to Sierra Leone to Sri Lanka to East Timor, and breaking stories of great impact in a career spanning more than a quarter-century.
I say 鈥渨as,鈥 because Marie Colvin is gone. It鈥檚 one thing to issue a spoiler alert or to avoid revealing the fate of the lead in a fictional tale, but it feels like it would be disrespectful to the memory of Ms. Colvin to treat her life — and her death — like a plot point.
Ms. Colvin, who had been a foreign affairs correspondent for the British newspaper The Sunday Times since 1985, and the French photographer Remi Ochlik were killed on Feb. 22, 2012, while covering the civil war in Syria and the Assad regime鈥檚 massacre of thousands of men, women and children.
A Private War is a straightforward and conventional but also appropriately grimy and bloody chronicle of the last 12 years of Ms. Colvin鈥檚 life. Despite the occasional moment when the depiction of newsroom procedures doesn鈥檛 quite ring true, or a supporting character delivers a line that鈥檚 a little too perfect and succinct for the moment, most of what transpires feels grimly authentic and true to the real-life characters and events.
The British actress Rosamund Pike, who often gives off a vibe of cool reserve (even when it might not be ideally suited to the part), admirably throws herself into her portrayal of Colvin. Ms. Pike鈥檚 husky, no-nonsense delivery is a spot-on take on the real Marie鈥檚 voice (as heard in TV and radio interviews), without sounding like an impersonation. Ms. Pike is equally believable in scenes when Colvin is crawling through the muck and dodging gunfire in hellish war zones, or when she鈥檚 gliding through a London soiree in high heels and a black dress.
Director Matthew Heineman and screenwriter Arash Amel (adapting a 2012 Vanity Fair profile by Marie Brenner) alternate between chaotic, sometimes murky docudrama-style sequences of Colvin鈥檚 harrowing experiences in some of the darkest and most dangerous pockets of the world and her time back home in London, where she tried to play the part of the dashing, wisecracking, life-of-the-party, rock-star journalist at cocktail parties and awards ceremonies, even as she was battling PTSD and sinking ever deeper into alcoholism.
(Little wonder director Heineman so expertly re-creates the war zone sequences, given his work as a documentarian includes Cartel Land, an unflinching look at the Mexican drug wars, and City of Ghosts, about the Syrian citizen journalist activists known as RBSS.)
In one of the most intense scenes in a movie filled with intensity, Colvin is felled by a grenade blast while covering the Sri Lankan Civil War in 2001 and loses her left eye.
Cut to a posh event in London, where Colvin sports an eye patch and copes with her situation by engaging in dark humor, as when she tells her editor to stop standing on her immediate left because she literally can鈥檛 see him from that angle.
Rather than resting on her laurels and taking a desk job, Colvin insists on returning to the most dangerous assignments imaginable, even though she鈥檚 haunted by nightmares and is becoming increasingly volatile and reckless, especially when she鈥檚 drunk.
Tom Hollander has the most thankless role in the film as Marie鈥檚 editor, who fusses about and throws little tantrums when she defies him, but doesn鈥檛 take her out of the game even after she鈥檚 clearly damaged, inside and out. The charmingly scene-grabbing Stanley Tucci wanders in out of nowhere as a wealthy businessman who falls for Marie. (He鈥檚 a composite character who might as well be wearing a nametag saying, 鈥淚鈥檓 a composite character.鈥)
The most surprising — positively surprising — performance in the film comes from Jamie Dornan as Paul Conroy, the Royal Artillery soldier turned freelance photographer who becomes Marie鈥檚 longtime partner in journalistic madness/bravery and her fiercely loyal friend.
Mr. Dornan was about as mesmerizing as a window display mannequin in the Fifty Shades movies, but he鈥檚 absolutely terrific here, delivering a lovely and warm performance as arguably the most sympathetic and relatable character in the entire film. He essentially serves as the stand-in for all of us, who admire the hell out of Marie Colvin and are eternally grateful for the work she did — especially when she put a name and a face on certain atrocities and thus made it impossible for the world to ignore them — but also lament that Marie couldn鈥檛, or wouldn鈥檛, find a way to come home and stay home, and let others take up the front-line charge. — Chicago Sun-Times/Adrews McMeel Syndication
Rating: 鈽呪槄鈽
MTRCB Rating: R-13
