Small cast, big suspense
Nerve-wracking Iraq war drama ‘The Wall’ doesn’t disappoint
This isn’t Donald Trump’s wall. It’s George W. Bush’s.
A title card curtly sums up the circumstances: “2007. Iraq. President Bush has declared victory.”
He had done so, in fact, four years earlier in front of the “Mission Accomplished” banner on the USS Abraham Lincoln. But Iraqi insurgents begged to differ.
In the opening film moment at hand, a distress call summons two American soldiers to the remote scene of a convoy attack. They arrive to see — from a safe distance through binoculars — eight people dead. No signs of life. The place is evidently deserted. Or is it? Nothing but a low stone wall separates their position from the bodies and a junkyard in the distance. Army Ranger Sgt. Matthews (John Cena) is champing at the bit to go down and investigate. His cautious spotter Isaac (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) wants to wait and observe further.
“You scared of a [expletive] wall?” asks Matthews.
“I’m scared of what’s behind it,” Isaac replies.
Matthews overrules him, a shot rings out, and the two Yanks find themselves pinned down on neither side of that flimsy wall by an Iraqi sniper who might be the infamous Juba (aka “Angel of Death”) — with 75 U.S. notches on his belt.
Isaac desperately radios for help, miraculously gets a response, relays crucial info as to their whereabouts — when the slight hint of an accent suddenly stops him cold.
“I just want to get to know you,” says the friendly voice on the other end. “Will you let me? ... I’ll start: I’m just a regular Iraqi man. ...”
A chilling kind of existential dialectic ensues.
“Who’s a terrorist?” the voice asks Isaac. “You come to another man’s country, occupy it, kill civilians. ... From where I’m sitting, YOU look much more like the terrorist. Tell me something, Isaac: The war’s over. Why are you still here?”
Is he just toying with the American before killing him? It seems he really wants to know — may already know — some secret answer to his question, while Isaac buys time, waiting and praying for rescue in the heat and choking dust. No food or water left. Hit in the knee, he twists a tourniquet, digs out the bullet, tries to avoid going into shock, while the crumbling wall “protecting” him gets smaller with each exchange of fire.
Both the pain and suspense are excruciating under the lean, mean direction of Doug Liman (“Bourne Identity”) and Dwain Worrell’s script (every other word of which is the F-one). Is this war or a game? Either way, 90 percent of it is contained — like Isaac — in a 20-by-6-foot space behind the remnant wall of what used to be a school.
“You’re hiding in the shadow of Islam,” says Isaac’s tormentor.
Virtually everything is in
extreme close-up, with the few long or tracking shots through the crosshair scopes of a rifle.
Mr. Taylor- Johnson (who won a Golden Globe last year for “Nocturnal Animals”) turns in an excellent terrified performance as Isaac. His cohort, Mr. Cena, is a WWE smackdown star. Since the only thing I wrestle with is my conscience, I can’t comment on his previous work, but he’s very convincing here. So is the creepy disembodied voice of Laith Nakli as Juba.
A good masochistic double bill would feature this film together with Clint Eastwood’s “American Sniper” — “The Wall” being not so much the other side as the underside of the story, whose ending will either satisfy or offend your sense of ironic justice.
Like James Franco’s “127 Hours,” the intensity is so nerve-wracking and dramatically high-pitched that we, the audience, want to escape almost as much as the characters do. I wouldn’t recommend it as a date flick, unless both members of the date are Navy SEALS.
But I’d recommend it.