Lacking focus and a sense of urgency
While it adheres to the same first-person template that made last year’s “Citizen Soldier” such an immersive experience, “Danger Close,” the latest drama-infused war documentary by David Salzberg and Christian Tureaud, fails to convey a similar sense of imminent peril.
It starts off great guns, following Alex Quade, a female war reporter embedded with U.S. special operations forces during a 2007 air assault mission in Afghanistan. As captured by night vision cameras, cellphones and on-the-ground video subsequently seized from the Taliban, the classified operation, which is cut short when one of its Chinook helicopters is shot down by a surface-to-air missile, is presented with an intense immediacy not usually associated with conventional documentaries.
Unfortunately, while serving as an embed in a subsequent mission in Iraq, Quade sustains injuries, forcing her to return to America for rehab. She recovers, but the film never regains its engrossing footing.
The source of the problem is that Tureaud and Salzberg, who also codirected 2014’s “The Hornet’s Nest,” can’t decide whose story they’re telling — Quade’s or that of Rob Pirelli, a well-regarded special forces staff sergeant killed in Iraq.
Ultimately, neither narrative receives sufficient attention, robbing the subjects and that unique p.o.v. of the focus and urgency that lent the previous two films their undeniable potency. “Danger Close.” Not rated. Running time: 1 hour, 37 minutes. Playing: Laemmle Music Hall, Beverly Hills.