One of my all time favorites.

Great Film overall

Absolutely brilliant

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

It's so shockingly sad to see the real poorly trained Marines in combat. Just a bunch of YOYOs, screaming their heads off when they were dropped behind the enemy line. All they did was just shooting blindly to somewhere in front of them. They carried so many gears in their backpack that made them very difficult to run in the field. What we heard from the commanding officer was just a bunch big and hollow words, trying so hard to encourage those young Marines to do a good job, but once they were on the ground, heard bullets whizzed around them, all they could do was screaming to each other, hiding from some obstacles and kept shooting blindly to their general random front directions. They have wasted so many bullets to shoot nothing. We were used to be fooled by many movies telling us how cool, how brave and how well-trained the US Marines, how tough they were, how they got even tougher jobs after they did several tours. The overly glorified US Marines stories were just like fictions, fantasies that could only exist in daydreams.This documentary if on the basis of exposing how terrible the US Marines during combat, it should got 10 stars, because it had vividly shown us how pathetic the Marines were in general. But if you take it from a different patriotic angle, this documentary sucked big time, it did nothing to glorify the US forces, especially the Marines. They have mindlessly wasted their lives wherever they were thrown into. All of them just looked so lame, so timid, so scared, all they could and would do is just shooting blindly to their unknown enemies. What a pathetic documentary since what it showed to us only made us shaking our heads constantly.

"Hell and Back Again" is a film that was inexplicably nominated for an Oscar. I say inexplicably not because of the subject matter but because the film just seemed to be lacking and didn't seem finished. Yet, oddly, it came close to winning the Oscar for the best documentary feature of the year.The film follows a marine, Nathan Harris, from his tour of duty in Afghanistan to his life at home following his severe injury in action. It goes back and forth again and again to both locations and the transitions back and forth are a bit jarring. So what did I think? Well, some of the film is quite good--such as seeing the tension and hellish battle conditions the men go through. But it also feels like they just ran out of money and stopped making the film--with so much unanswered and Harris's fate very, very uncertain. The film just seems to stop...and is maddening to watch because of this.

Hell and Back Again is a war film that should be shown to teenagers rather than something like Battle: Los Angeles. This is a true account of the war in Afghanistan, showing real-life footage of the war taken from the director himself.We follow around Nathan Harris, a twenty-year old Marine sergeant, who has returned from his six month tour in Afghanistan in a wheelchair. Shortly before the end of his deployment, he is shot by a sniper, with the bullet going through his right hip, punctured his hip socket, before finally collapsing to break his leg. It's a messy scenario, and Harris will need a full year of rehab before returning to Afghanistan.In the meantime, Harris is trying to adjust to civilian life, while coping with an injury, and is being cared for by his high school sweetheart Ashley. He always seems to be on some sort of medication, and is clearly suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. During this time, the film is intercut with combat footage, showing Harris leading his men, strategizing, sometimes stressing, and shooting. It's effective and serves purpose because it real and not fictionalized or dramatized for theatrical purposes.Some sequences, arguably some of the best, show the Marines talking to the Afghanistan civilians who are disgusted by the Marines invading their area, complicating farming and disrupting their family life. They give the Afghanistan people some humanity and distinction rather than we Americans declaring them "stupid terrorists." One of the strongest things a documentary can do is obviously inform, and Hell and Back Again shows us a world we don't like to think about.Although the film is poignant, relative, and undeniably interesting, at some points it feels a bit too distended from its actual topic. It's trying to showcase the struggle and inevitably complex adaptation from one life to another, yet it seems to be too sidetracked by showing a number of from the Afghanistan War. And sometimes, the results feels a tad too cinematic by showing a stressed out, barely functional Nathan with his head in his hands, while audio from combat is playing over the scene. It's things like that in which a documentary tries to be too much like a fictional film, by splicing up its own narrative and thoughts in the process.It still doesn't derail what an incredibly moving film Hell and Back Again is. I recently discussed with a friend about the abundance of media coverage returning soldiers get. I find it to be extremely necessary to show our troops coming home, and that we should never forget the fact that freedom is a lot of things, but not free. I was also told by my grandmother that when soldiers used to come home, they came home and that was it. The Vietnam Vets didn't even get a look from bystanders in the same directions. We have become graphic nationalists in just a few decades and here is a beautifully crafted documentary showing the hardships soldiers face when the battle comes to an end and is transported overseas in your own living room. It seems one doesn't go back to Hell, but rather remains in it.Starring: Marine Sgt. Nathan Harris and Ashley Harris. Directed by: Danfung Dennis.

Three generations of my family have served their country, with members in almost every branch of the United States Armed Forces. While I decided not to follow in the footsteps of aunts, uncles, cousins, or even my parents, my baby brother did. The day after Katrina hit New Orleans he enlisted in the Marine Corp. It was his unit that was filmed for this documentary.These men are not actors, they are not trying to "play it up" for the camera and any insinuations to the contrary are beyond offensive. These are trained soldiers who sign their lives away to the government for years at a time, some in hopes of earning school funds, and others a career. Their main worries are to do as commanded, and stay alive long enough to be able to reach their end goals. I watched this documentary with my eyes wide open, with the personal knowledge of how these events changed someone I love.The beauty of Hell and Back Again is that it allows the rest of the world to see what soldiers and their families live with. We send our soldiers off knowing that at best they will be forever psychologically scarred and at worst we receive that dreaded knock on the door. When they do return we have to help them adjust back to their "normal" lives. So even though Sgt. Harris is the focus, this really is the story of every soldier who has been in a combat zone.I hope that this film helps people understand that even though many have life altering physical injuries, the hardest part for most will be the life-long mental battle. Only through the genius of editing that follows the emotional path rather than the chronological, can we see those highs and lows with such intensity.In the end I can only repeat what I told my brother after I saw this film. It allowed me to understand him better, not only as a soldier, but as a changed man. And even though he is still a pain in the rear, I am glad that he made it home alive, issues and all.