REVIEW - WHICH WAY IS THE FRONT LINE FROM HERE?

Sebastian Junger's eulogy to his Restrepo co-director, photojournalist Tim Hetherington, killed during combat in Libya two years ago, is an engrossing documentary that reminds us of the value of life. Hetherington was a giant in his own field, but Junger's esteem not only for his art but also for his character could make a case that the life of any human being on this planet might be worth a feature-length portrait such as this. But Junger's and others' infatuation with Hetherington obscures any potential obscurity in the material, presenting him as a cut and dried deific figure, and it has the texture of a nagging homily at times, coming from a place just adjacent to the moral outrage he specifically prohibited from his work. Sure, I found myself at fault too, feeling that the pair's outlook on young men in war was sentimentalised and thus misrepresentative of the true nature of conflict and the military, then admitting to myself that I was merely bugged by my disagreement, and that my opinions need not be those of everybody else. Still I was disappointed when such banal conclusions were reached after all this much-celebrated intimacy and insight. While the film itself descends into mundane old mush, Hetherington's images, featured frequently, actually become more powerful as the runtime wears on. The first half courses through gutsier material, in post civil war Liberia, with less naff pontificating and more of the immediacy it aims to achieve, and is thoroughly involving.