A Private War (2018)

A PRIVATE WAR  (2018)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Matthew Heineman
    Rosamund Pike, Jamie Dornan, Tom Hollander,
    Stanley Tucci, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Corey Johnson
A fragmented, hair-raising look at the work of war correspondents, starring Rosamund Pike as Marie Colvin, a reporter for Britain's Sunday Times, who covered every dangerous hot spot she could get to from 1986 till her death in 2012. Armed with a notebook and a Bic pen, a laptop  she's at odds with and plenty of cigarettes, Colvin turns up in Sri Lanka, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, dodging bullets and rocket fire every step of the way. It takes a toll. She loses an eye in a firefight (but looks great in an eyepatch), suffers from PTSD, and has a serious drinking problem. She's what used to be known as "a tough broad," but her gruff manner only partly masks the compassion that drives her work. She admits she hates being in war zones, but she keeps going back to them, specifically to the places where civilians are being targeted and slaughtered. "I want to tell the world your story," is her standard introduction to the broken, lost souls she writes about, and she does that, till an artillery round in Syria brings her life to a violent close. At a time when the bully in the White House routinely trashes journalists enemies of the people, it's good to be reminded (again) that the best of them are anything but.