The unnerving documentary is all the more necessary, and all the more shocking, in its immediacy.

| Mar 15, 2018

The direct-cinema authenticity that a soldier's eye gives to this largely street-fought war...lends The War Tapes its primary strength.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 7, 2010

Intentionally or not, the movie locates a strain of ignorance to go along with the bravery

| Aug 30, 2009

They expected tension; what they didn't expect was to serve out their year-long deployment as, essentially, the world's most targeted grocery store security.

| Original Score: B- | Jul 2, 2009

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 7, 2008

The director has managed to shape real people's lives into a drama, without imposing ideological filters, and without sacrificing what makes them real.

| Feb 1, 2008

Gripping, boring, disturbing, amusing, enlightening and frustrating.

| Feb 22, 2007

This is an important film, but be prepared for shocks.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Oct 20, 2006

A scary diary of their increasingly dehumanized daily lives (mostly spent protecting supply convoys on the dangerous highways) and the movie evokes the futile larger war around them in a series of haunting images.

| Original Score: B | Oct 19, 2006

What's here speaks for itself, and what it says is often surprising and deeply unsettling, regardless of one's political leanings.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Oct 15, 2006

Informative as most of the partisan-produced, anti-war documentaries that we've seen in the last several years have been, none match this one for its wide-ranging scope and lived-it-at-ground-zero truth.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Oct 13, 2006

...it would make a great double bill with the recent My Country, My Country, which looks at things from the other side.

Full Review | Oct 12, 2006

Arguably the most vital and eye-opening documentary yet made regarding the United States' current military entanglement.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 12, 2006

The film succeeds because of its refreshingly low-key emotional approach and its refusal to impose character arcs or political agendas on its subjects' footage.

Full Review | Oct 12, 2006

Universally Worthwhile -- not just as a documentary on this war. But as a documentary on this war, I think it's quite interestingly balanced.

| Original Score: A- | Oct 12, 2006

A painfully intimate snapshot of who they are, the damage they inflict on an unseen enemy and what they endure while doing so, in all its absurd, dehumanizing and ennobling contradictions.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Oct 5, 2006

As raw and disturbing as it is wry and satirical, the resulting portrait is a powerfully unique film that goes beyond commenting on Operation Iraqi Freedom to become a provocative meditation on war itself.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 30, 2006

The edited footage has an intensity and immediacy you won't find on cable news networks.

| Original Score: B+ | Sep 29, 2006

The film is one of the most urgent and immediate nonfiction works we may ever see.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 22, 2006

The apolitical film serves us well for its candor.

| Original Score: B- | Sep 21, 2006