CAMP X-RAY

IFC Films

Reviewed for Shockya by Harvey Karten. Data-based on Rotten Tomatoes

Grade:  B

Director:  Peter Sattler

Screenplay:  Peter Sattler

Cast:  Kristen Stewart, Tara Holt, Lane Garrison, John Carroll Lynch

Screened at:  Critics’ link, NYC, 9/13/14

Opens:  October 17, 2014

The Obama administration has come under criticism particularly from the left for keeping the Guantanamo detention camp running, despite the absence of charges and trials for the alleged terrorists imprisoned in this Cuban facility.  “Camp X-Ray,” named after a branch of Gitmo that was later closed, is not a political drama nor is does it follow a documentary format.  Instead, Peter Sattler’s drama, which presumably could be presented on an off-Broadway stage in that almost all the action takes place inside the compound, is a human one, a look at what could take place if an American guard were to establish sufficient rapport with a detainee.  The very fact that much is made of the liaison between Pvt Amy Cole (Kristen Stewart) aka Blondie, and long-term detainee Ali Amir (Payman Moaadi) implies that the unfortunate fellows rotting behind steel doors may have their absolute basic needs taken care—after all this is not Tehran’s notorious Ervin prison or Louisiana’s dreaded Angola facility.  But their human needs for communication with their fellows are ignored.  These Muslims are, in effect, in solitary confinement, barred by concrete walls from their fellow inmates, forced to eat alone in their cells from styrofoam trays, and given solitary exercise within a small, fenced it compound resembling a dog run.

In this bleak situation comes pretty young Pvt. Cole, a small town gal who had never been anywhere and who believes that her service in the army would allow her to “do something important.”  She receives her baptism of fire at Gitmo: one prisoner flings a tub of his “Chanel No. 2” at her, while the other privates, a corporal and a commanding officer treat her in a variety of ways.  One grunt, who correctly interprets a come-on in her room, acts animalistic as he begins what he falsely assumes is lovemaking.  Another asks her whether she is “a soldier” or “a female soldier,” and if the latter, whether she is unable to handle a delicate situation which a male colleague would be freed to take care of.  The commanding officer, Col Drummond (John Carroll Lynch), takes her to task for filing a report with him accusing a corporal of violating standard procedure by having her look directly at a prisoner as he removes his clothes to take a shower.

The principal action, the most theatrical drama in the story, takes place in the conversations between Pvt. Amy Cole and Ali Amir. Though warned not to let prisoners “get into your head,” and cautioned that they will be “testing you,” she at first acts tougher than she really is in ignoring that Amir has to say, choosing to reply to him only “keep it down.”  It’s no wonder that he laughs his butt off when she becomes the recipient of that Chanel No. 2, victimized as though a patron in a zoo who has just had poop flung at her by a chimpanzee.  Gradually her defenses break down as do Amir’s, as they relate to each other their hopes and dreams which, though conveyed through a predictable enough screenplay by the director nonetheless takes on import because of the credible chemistry between detainee and guard.

Kristen Stewart takes dynamite close-ups, allowing us in the audience to measure every nuance of emotion, while just inches away but behind a heavy door, Amir tells us of his understandable frustrations which, at one point, compels him to threaten suicide. Interestingly, though the main purpose of the guards is not to keep the prisoners in since “the walls do that,” their aim is to prevent suicide by passing by the cells every fifteen minutes, even force-feeding the most repulsive of the detainees.

Film buffs will remember Moaadi’s lead performance in “A Separation,” a more complex and dramatic movie about a married couple’s wresting with the decision of whether to seek a better life in another country or stay in Iran to look after a father afflicted with Alzheimer’s.  But this is Stewart’s film, a soulful performance by an actress who is best known here for playing Jodie Foster’s daughter in David Fincher’s “Panic Room.”

Rated R. 117 minutes.  © 2014 by Harvey Karten, Member, New York Film Critics Online

Story – B-

Acting – B+

Technical – B

Overall – B