a PrivaTe war
Courage under fire…
Out 15 February
i nspired by journalist Marie Brenner’s Vanity Fair article ‘Marie Colvin’s Private War’, this fiction feature debut from Matthew Heineman, director of acclaimed documentaries Cartel Land and City Of Ghosts, is a wrenching testament to the late war reporter Marie Colvin, played here superbly by Rosamund Pike.
Beginning and ending in the besieged Syrian city of Homs, where Colvin was killed in February 2012 in a targeted bombardment by President Assad’s forces, A Private War focuses on the last decade of her life. Mirroring her restlessness, it shifts episodically between a number of war zones from where she courageously reported, often alongside photographer Paul Gilroy (Jamie Dornan): these include
Sri Lanka (where she was blinded in one eye), Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, interspersed with R&R stints in London.
Pike’s gravel-voiced Colvin emerges as a complex individual, driven by a compulsion to bear witness in her work to the appalling suffering inflicted upon civilians at times of war. Meanwhile, her editor (Tom Hollander) bluntly tells her that, “Nobody in their right mind would do what you do.” Colvin herself repeatedly worries about whether enough of her readers will care enough for it to make any difference: concerns that have, tragically, been validated by the ongoing death toll in Syria ever since her own killing. Tom Dawson
THe verdiCT
Propelled by Pike’s commanding lead performance, this is a forceful tribute to an outstanding war reporter.
CERTIFICATE 15 DIRECTOR Matthew Heineman STARRING Rosamund Pike, Tom Hollander, Jamie Dornan SCREENPLAY Arash Amel DISTRIBUTOR Altitude RUNNING TIME 110 mins