The Situation

The conflict in Iraq is so overwhelming, controversial, and timely a subject that the makers of “The Situation”—self-proclaimed as the first feature film to focus on the war—exert most of their energy explaining themselves.

As they try to prove that they understand the complexities of Iraq and care about the continuing tragedy, mawkish sentimentality and ham-fisted didacticism join forces to drain the project of all dramatic coherence.

After curfew in Samarra, in Iraq’s volatile Sunni triangle, two Iraqi teenagers approach an American checkpoint. Unarmed and submissive, the teenagers reflexively put up their hands—and the Americans respond by throwing the both off the bridge. One drowns.

It’s a shocking incident, and the film sets out to unravel its repercussions. The boy’s funeral, complete with stilted expository dialogue from journalist-turned-screenwriter Wendell Steavenson and faux Middle Eastern music by Jeff Beal, is meant to point at the strained social hierarchy in Samarra.

Yet just as the film is taking shape as a careful exposition of Iraqi local politics, it changes course, styling itself as both thriller and romance.

Enter Anna Molyneux (Connie Nielson of “Gladiator”), an empathic and attractive blonde reporter who, when she is not gazing at a love interest, spends most of her time looking around in helpless horror. You can’t blame her for her reaction to the situation in Iraq, but her constant vulnerability does not help make her a compelling protagonist.

Anna’s real role in the film is as a point in common among the different sides of the conflict. Her boyfriend Dan (Damian Lewis) is a liberal but desensitized American military intelligence officer based in Baghdad’s Green Zone who spouts bizarre nonsense about the insurgency: “There is no truth, because it’s lost in the fourth dimension of time,” he blabbers at one point. “The game’s a kaleidoscope.”

At moments like this, you wonder whether Steavenson should have stuck with journalism.

Meanwhile, Anna warms to a sensitive Iraqi photojournalist named Zaid. Zaid, at the very leasts, shows her that there are attractive men. Zaid is yet another simplistic character, a quintessential good guy lacking not only flaws, but also any other traits that might have caught this reviewer’s interest.

Director Phillip Haas convincingly evokes the paranoid atmosphere in Iraq, with its confusing web of alliances and grotesque ironies. Particularly successful is the portrait of the Green Zone, even if it is driven home rather more emphatically than necessary: Anna and Dan lounge by the pool at a luxurious club as mortar attacks continue outside, and they make love to the sound of gunfire.

At the same time, the film portrays U.S. soldiers with a striking lack of nuance. No explanation surfaces for the drowning at Samarra, and members of the military consistently paint themselves as ignorant thugs, spouting phrases such as, “I’m a soldier. Give me some shit to blow up.”

With its flawed, but gripping, portrayal of Iraq, the film tries to supply both drama and insight, but it can’t get either quite right. Yet you have to give Haas some credit: if the audience leaves the theatre hopeless and unsatisfied, it’s somewhat fitting for a film about Iraq.