'Korengal' focuses on the postwar lives of a combat team from Afghanistan

'Korengal' is somewhat of a follow-up to Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington's documentary 'Restrepo.'

|
Outpost Films and Saboteur Media
Sterling Jones participates in a firefight at OP Restrepo in Afghanistan, in the documentary film 'Korengal.'

“Korengal” is a kind of follow-up to the Oscar-nominated documentary “Restrepo,” in which journalists Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington brought us way inside Afghanistan’s most dangerous outpost. Hetherington subsequently was killed covering the civil war in Libya. 

Junger returns to the fray in “Korengal,” although this film focuses on postwar interviews with many of the same men from the 173rd Combat Team. They hash out the manifold ordeals of their service, but rarely does anything startlingly new emerge – which is not to say that the film doesn’t have value. War is hell and always will be. 

But when one of the soldiers, Misha Pemble-Belkin, comparing serving in Afghanistan to his current civilian life, says “I’d rather be there than here,” you wish the film had dug deeper into this mind-set. Grade: B (Rated R for language throughout and brief nude images)

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to 'Korengal' focuses on the postwar lives of a combat team from Afghanistan
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Movies/2014/0613/Korengal-focuses-on-the-postwar-lives-of-a-combat-team-from-Afghanistan
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe