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

| Mar 15, 2018

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

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

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

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

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

No matter what you think of the U.S. presence in Iraq, the film will disturb or startle or dismay you.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Sep 15, 2006

A remarkable film, a you-are-there document that allows us to worry about the soldier who's risking his life even as we ponder the rights and wrongs of this military engagement.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Aug 31, 2006

The documentary camera has made repeated trips to occupied Iraq, but never to such raw and honest effect as in The War Tapes.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 25, 2006

An absolutely spellbinding first-person documentary of regular soldiers in the Iraq War, as seen through digital cameras carried into combat.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 25, 2006

No matter where one stands on the political map, no matter what one's views of Operation Iraqi Freedom and its aftermath, this film is compelling, troubling and illuminating.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 25, 2006

Director Deborah Scranton, co-producer and editor Steve James and co-producer Robert May managed to assemble the immense footage into a taut, often searing 97 minutes.

| Original Score: A- | Aug 25, 2006

Moriarty, Pink and Bazzi sent back tape loaded with visual and audio detail, but the most moving moments of The War Tapes are their attempts to make sense of Operation Iraqi Freedom II.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 7, 2006

A fascinating chronicle of wartime, told by several distinct and vivid narrators.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Jul 6, 2006

At its best, The War Tapes serves as an exploration of the soldier mentality -- or at least of the mentality of the folks who'd volunteer to go to Iraq.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jun 30, 2006

When it's over, you're not any closer to understanding the war. What stays with you are three sobering and complicated examples of its effect on the troops.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jun 30, 2006

What it does do, with grim and often gruesome honesty, is show the realities of war to a public that has been largely shielded from its cost.

| Jun 29, 2006

For The War Tapes, Scranton supplied mini-DV cameras to several soldiers and asked them to record as much as they could of their year in Iraq, even if it meant attaching the equipment to helmets and gun-sights and just letting the tape roll.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Jun 29, 2006

A gripping documentary that takes embedding pretty much right inside the soldiers' brains.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jun 2, 2006