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There is a tragic aspect we live through that tragic story that seems quite different as it speaks of one of the most famous war correspondents of our time. She is a woman called Mary Colvin, who is a very frightened and rebellious spirit and may have lived through these strange feelings. It is the woman who has decided to be given a real aspect around the front lines of conflicts around the world to give voice to the blind who fought hard.
While it occasionally pulls away from Colvin to let the nightmarish inhumanity of war provide power and feeling, it all too often relies on juiced-up expressions of humanist heroism.
It's clear Marie Colvin deserves a biopic, but this first dramatic feature by documentary filmmaker Matthew Heineman feels too by-the-numbers to do her justice.
Despite the undeniably extraordinary feats that Colvin achieved in life and on the edge of death, A Private War is a hagiography that reduces a complicated woman down to trauma, booze, and typing.
Poor, gifted Rosamund Pike is persuaded to play the American-born Sunday Times journo at full throttle, when half-throttle would be a nice occasional variant.
"A Private War" doesn't ask you to understand the politics of war, only the human side. And it shows the toll war takes on people's souls, most of which it never gives back.
Matthew Heineman is a documentary filmmaker and his A Private War is a sturdy chronicle of Colvin's fearless life of speaking truth to power, only to be admired because of the unthinkable risks she herself took in order to do so.