Photo Credit: A24 Studios with Nat Wolff, left, and Alexander Skarsgard on the right.
Written and Directed by: Dan Krauss
Starring: Nat Wolff, Adam Long, Jonathan Whitesell, Brian “Sene” Marc, Alexander Skarsgård
From Academy Award winning director Dan Krauss comes “The Kill Team,” a docudrama about the Maywand District murders during our conflict in Afghanistan. The drama centers around Private Andrew Briggman’s (Nat Wolff) moral conflict over the platoon’s participation in the murder of innocent Afghan civilians.
Krauss, who directed the documentary this film is based off, has an exceptional eye for unfolding drama in a natural setting and his experience with the documentary this film is based on made him the ideal choice to explore a dramatized version.
The story we get is a psychological look at conflicted soldiers, who are first out to prove they are worthy, second to protect their own hides and those of their team and third, are loyal to a fault. Wolff gives a very convincing performance as someone who is trapped under their own skin, not just as he is acclimatizing to his new surroundings, but dealing with familial pressures at home with a father who was a desk jokey during Vietnam and an over protective mother.
Interestingly, Alexander Skarsgård’s Sergeant Deeks serves as the stronger father figure to Andrew than his own father. While this serves to underpin the dramatic conflict Briggman undergoes, it undermines the most basic answer to the character’s challenge: should I take action or not.
Skarsgård and Wolff are formidable when they are onscreen together. Deeks is a hard case, someone who thinks he can get away with whatever he wants. He engenders loyalty in order to build his troops to his own cause. That cause is not exactly made clear in the story, but Skarsgård gives a convincing performance otherwise, having fun with the boys.
Adding to Briggman’s internal conflict are his teammates, namely Rayburn (Adam Long) and Coombs (Jonathan Whitesell). From Briggman’s perspective, they were wildly out of control, the fears of war and conflict worn on their sleeves. Krauss uses this to deflect Briggman’s attempt to report the situation to his family, bringing Briggman closer to Deeks.
Briggman’s psychosis was reminiscent of Doug Liman’s “The Wall,” in which two snipers are pinned against each other in a mortal struggle for survival; here, the only way out for Briggman was through his own wall, Deeks, who thinks he is invincible.
That invincibility clouds the justification for their actions and strangles any meaningful resolution.
Krauss’s story spends far too much time with story threads that meander, tamping down on the drama. There is a realism to what happens on the screen because Krauss has seen the situation unfold in front of in in real time. There is also a realism in Wolff’s performance, that convincingly makes his struggle interesting, but to a fault. Life can’t be edited down to the sum of its parts, but that’s what they tried to accomplish here.
If anything, the fictionalized “Kill Team” compels one to consider the 2014 documentary if nothing else then to better understand the rationale behind this group of elite soldiers committing crimes such as this.
“The Kill Team” has a strong cast and solid performances but doesn’t make for compelling drama.
1.5 out of 4
