Critic wrangle: "Full Battle Rattle."

2008-07-11 18:00:11

No critic would argue that Tony Gerber and Jesse Moss haven't found themselves a fascinating subject in their doc "Full Battle Rattle," which opened Wednesday and which focuses on Medina Wasl, a fake Iraqi village filled with real Iraqi exiles that's the final stop for soldiers heading for all-too-real Iraq deployment -- a massive, Army-run simulation. Whether "Full Battle Rattle" succeeds as a film is a point of debate for some, though again, reviews are mostly positive. "Full Battle Rattle is an indelible vision of modern war, a not-so-fun fun-house mirror of the Iraq occupation," writes David Edelstein at New York. "The film is freaky, amusing, and sickening in equal measures--part fly-on-the-wall vérité, part multiple-perspective Altmanesque tragicomedy." "Full Battle Rattle works just fine as a two-fisted combat story, with unexpected bursts of violence peppering that old universal message that war is hell," adds Noel Murray at the Onion AV Club....

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