No Man's Land

What a great story. What an awful story. It's great because it is adept in showing us how inhuman war really is, and manages to even be funny in parts. It's awful because it has one of the worst final images of any war film I've seen. Two men, a Bosnian and a Serb, are at a stand-off in a trench in No Man's Land with another Bosnian who has been placed on a mine that will explode if he is moved. The press and the UN come to "help" yet the men themselves are secondary to the greater goals of informing the public and fulfilling world-mandated roles. The ending should make you wonder why we (the Americans, the world) were there in the first place, what we were meant to be doing there, and most importantly of all, what happened to the Bosnians and the Serbs when we left.

original title: Nicija Zemlja
year: 2001
length: 98 min.
rating: 3.5
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0283509/combined