Camp X-Ray Reviews Compilation Post

SPOILERS ALERT

The Slanted:

Going into Sundance, Kristen Stewart’s upcoming drama on Guantanamo Bay named ‘Camp X-Ray’ was a film on almost everyone’s list. The screening did incredibly well at Sundance, with many viewers offering up a standing ovation when the film came to an end.

This isn’t Stewart’s first time at Sundance, in 2010 she attended for the premiere of “The Runaways,” but her film “Camp X-Ray” is looking like it will be one of the star’s best ever performances. The screening was held earlier this afternoon (Friday) at the lovely Eccles Theater in Park City, Utah.

The film of course was shot nowhere near the actual location, but set design was astonishingly well done.

Stewart, in the past, has been criticized for her somewhat cold-approach to acting, but here its a perfect for this character. It adds another layer of bubbling inner-conflict to the soldier, who more often than not is more statuesque than a regular person would be. It’s refreshing to see Stewart in a role that fits her acting a little better, and she should be very exceed to see the film’s release.

THR:

Writer-director Peter Sattler’s riveting first feature, Camp X-Ray, leaves aside the controversy surrounding Guantanamo Bay to focus instead on a personal drama of human connection and compassion, deftly drawn out of the mundane day-to-day of cellblock life. In essence a two-hander, it balances a powerfully internalized performance from Kristen Stewart, delivering perhaps her best screen work to date as an inexperienced military guard, against an equally compelling characterization from Payman Maadi as the long-term detainee who pierces her shell. Its psychological complexity and rich emotional rewards should ensure this expertly crafted if overlong film a significant audience.

Sattler signals his storytelling confidence from the outset with the taut pre-title sequence. An Arab-language television newscast shows the familiar image of smoke billowing from the Twin Towers, while a Middle-Eastern man prepares to leave his dingy apartment. As he pauses to pray, law enforcement agents burst into the room, slipping a sack over his head and removing him on a journey that – in quick cuts of starkly framed images – transports him and others by air, sea and road to a steel-fenced prison facility where they are placed in individual cages. When the sack is removed, we see the beaten, bloodied face of the man we will come to know as Ali (Maadi), or detainee 471.

Jumping ahead eight years, recent recruit Cole (Stewart) arrives, and with other new guards, is given the standard orientation drill. That includes 12-hour patrol rotation and suicide watch every three minutes through glass windows in each single-occupancy cell door. “They will test you, they will best you,” says Ransdell, the division’s cocky tough-guy corporal who will be Cole’s direct superior. He advises the newbies to share no names or information: “Don’t let them get inside your head.”

Anxious to prove her mettle in the mostly male company, Cole volunteers on day one to be part of a four-member Initial Reaction Force team called to subdue a violent jihadist detainee. Her “Welcome to Gitmo” involves being punched in the face and spat on. In these lean establishing scenes, Sattler and editor Geraud Brisson lay a foundation of atmospheric tension, aided by the measured movement and steady gaze of James Laxton’s digital camerawork and by Jess Stroup’s moody melodic score.

The tone begins to shift, however, during a terrific scene invigorated by unexpected humor, in which Cole wheels the book cart along the cellblock corridor and has her first interaction with Ali. Returning a fat volume of Emily Dickinson poems, he sniffs at the other reading material on offer before launching into a rant about the guards withholding the seventh Harry Potter book to drive him crazy. In this and subsequent exchanges he needles Cole – sometimes just toying with her, sometimes getting aggressive or downright nasty – while she endeavors to remain impassive.
Attempting to adapt to the military mindset, Cole participates in beer blasts and fishing trips. She tries to swallow her moral misgivings when she feels Ali is being inhumanly punished for a transgression in which she was affected. But when Ransdell hits on her and she has second thoughts about consenting, her acceptance in the company is threatened. Observing her talking with Ali in the exercise yard, the corporal uses his power to humiliate both guard and detainee.

Cole’s decision to report Ransdell for conduct violation backfires in another intensely played scene. She is interviewed by the commanding officer (John Carroll Lynch), who makes his feelings clear concerning his views on reporting against a fellow officer and also his own resentment at being assigned to Gitmo.

At a fraction under two hours, the film could benefit from minor tightening, particularly of some midsection slackening. But the continuing evolution of Cole’s cautious friendship with Ali is observed with emotional integrity and poignancy, depicting two intelligent people in contrasting states of confinement, each of them seeking contact. The dramatic stakes are elevated in a highly suspenseful climactic scene during which both Cole and Ali reveal more about themselves in a few minutes than they have throughout the entire movie.

“You and me are at war,” Ali says to her at one point. But while the detainee’s innocence as a terrorism suspect is clearly inferred, one of the strengths of Sattler’s screenplay is his refusal to make this a straightforward drama about enemies, injustice or dehumanizing persecution. He makes it about empathy, and in doing so broadens the intimate story to find thematic universality.

Sattler’s grasp of character is exceptional, as is his guidance of the actors, suggesting distinct personalities among Cole’s macho fellow guards generally with just a line or two. But the pulse of this enhanced chamber piece, much of which obviously takes place in claustrophobic interiors, is the unlikely bond of Cole and Ali.

Best known for his fine work as the embattled husband in Iranian foreign-language Oscar winner A Separation, Maadi makes Ali a proud, angry man, as dismissive of his fellow inmates’ hostility as he is of the U.S. military. His bitterness when he strips Cole of her delusions about herself and what she has learned is formidable. But so too is his shattering fragility when he ponders his future.

Ever since the Twilight backlash began, people have questioned whether Stewart is merely a sullen screen queen or a real actor. She puts that argument to rest here, playing a tough, taciturn character driven by an inarticulate urge “to do something important,” but steadily awakened by unpredictable reality. It’s a fiercely contained performance, conveying raw personal insights even when Cole outwardly remains clenched in discomfort. There’s not a moment Stewart’s onscreen here where she isn’t completely transfixing.

The Salt Lake Tribune:

*** (three stars)
Once you get past the obvious physical miscasting of the petite Kristen Stewart as a Guantanamo Bay MP, writer-director Peter Sattler’s drama "Camp X-Ray" plays out as a thoughtful story of two people caught in a bad situation. Stewart plays Pfc. Amy Cole, assigned to Gitmo in 2009, and getting accustomed to the daily routine of tending to the detainees who have been locked up since 2001. Though she’s warned not to get conversational with the detainees, she becomes intrigued with one, Alim (Payman Maadi, from "A Separation"), whose long record of outbursts belies an erudite soul who does sudoku puzzles and reads the Harry Potter books. Sattler uses the byplay between Amy and Alim to illustrate the gulf between two cultures, and the strong performances by Stewart and Maadi highlight the difference between what we think we know about "the other" and how they really are.
-- Sean P. Means

HitFix:

Kristen Stewart's involvement will no doubt bring a certain amount of attention to Peter Sattler's debut feature film, "Camp X-Ray," which is probably the best use she could make of the stardom she seemed so uncomfortable with in the wake of the massive success of the "Twilight" series.

That discomfort, evident in pretty much any interview or red carpet she's ever done, is one of the her assets as a performer, and in the right role, it can be a very compelling thing. She stars as Cole, a young soldier stationed as a guard at Guantanamo Bay eight years after the events of 9/11. The movie unfolds in a very deliberate, experiential way. It actually opens with the smoking World Trade Center on TV. We see that we're in a hotel room. There's a man with several cell phones praying to Mecca. In mid-prayer, he is grabbed, a bag pulled over his head, and then we see a series of images of various people being transferred to Guantanamo. Our last glimpse of him is huddled in a cage, face bloodied and bruised, with armed soldiers all around.

Eight years later, once Cole starts her tour at Gitmo, we catch up with Ali (Payman Maadi), who is still being detained. The film paints a portrait of the daily life of both the soldiers who are stationed there and the detainees (it is pointed out early on that they are never to be referred to as "prisoners" because of the Geneva Conventions), and perhaps the strongest thing Sattler does is try to maintain a neutral eye as he looks at the way this situation affects both sides.

When I wrote a review of "Lone Survivor" recently, I got some angry reactions from people upset that I didn't like the movie and that I questioned the value of the mission depicted in the film. One of the oddest cognitive disconnects possible is when someone tells you to shut up and keep your opinion to yourself because soldiers are fighting for your freedom. Never mind the fact that stifling an opinion you don't like runs entirely counter to the notion of freedom. What really seems strange to me about that reaction is the idea that someone genuinely believes that my personal freedom is impacted one way or another by what happened to a handful of SEALs on a mountain in Afghanistan, or the notion that same freedom depends on the actions of soldiers in a military prison in Cuba. Whether Sattler wants his film to be political or not, it is, simply by virtue of the ideas it addresses. While I understand the hole that our government dug for itself with the detainees, I don't understand the utter lack of forward motion regarding what we're supposed to do with these people. At what point do we admit that our security theater has been unsuccessful, and how do we even begin to address the mistakes we've made regarding some of these people?

Slowly, a rapport develops between Cole and Ali, and both Stewart and Maadi do excellent work in the film. Maadi captures the rage and the helplessness and the struggle to maintain some semblance of sanity when locked in an insane situation with no end in sight. Stewart manages to etch a very empathetic portrait of a young woman who isn't completely comfortable with what she's being asked to do, and the obvious ambivalence she has towards her hometown that she escaped and the life she's signed up for make her the perfect guide for us through what is a very complicated moral landscape. Sattler wisely never tries to portray Ali as a complete innocent. The opening scenes with him are just quick enough, full of small details that are hard to sort out, that it's hard not to think that he was involved in something. But what? And when there's no trial and no push to learn anything from the people being detained, what's the point? For a country that spends so much time talking about the importance of freedom, we seem perfectly content to deny that to people over vague possible wrongdoing, and happy to have those people out of sight where we don't have to think about it.

On the bus after the film, one guy was loudly complaining that the film only bothered to humanize one of the detainees, but I think that's actually sort of canny on Sattler's part. The more of the detainees he introduces and the more he tries to paint full pictures of each of them, the less time he has to do so. Instead, by focusing on Cole and Ali, he's doing his best to let them stand as representatives for both sides, and in their human interaction, we can see the entire dynamic of Guantanamo Bay writ large. There's a moment early on where Cole and Ali talk about the books on the small library cart that she's tasked with rolling around for the prisoners, and while it's both absurdly funny and completely mundane, it says a lot about both of them. Cole resists listening to anything Ali is saying beyond a surface level, because it is easier to treat him as a faceless number than it is to acknowledge that he is a human being locked in confinement for eight years without any sort of due process, and Ali is so focused on his own outrage that he doesn't see how dangerous it is for any guard to deal with him on a personal level.

Little by little, though, there are shifts in perception and moments of understanding and by the end of the film, there is something real that happens between them. There's no giant dramatic impossible conclusion built into the film by Sattler. He knows that this situation will keep rolling on for the foreseeable future, and that no one soldier and no one detainee will change that. But his film dares to suggest that the only true chance there is for any solution exists when we see each other as something more than labels and surfaces, an idea that evidently still terrifies many people on both sides of the equation.

Technical support is strong for Sattler on the film, and special note must be made of the work by Richard Wright, the film's production designer. He's done a great job of creating a Guantanamo Bay that feels real and functional instead of a movie set. The film is carefully shot, with a fine eye for detail, by James Laxton, and Jess Stroup's score offers fine emotional shading without hammering anything. The rest of the cast is also very good, with Lane Garrison in fine form as Corporal Ransdell, the Texas-bred roughneck who Cole answers to directly. I really like the way his character's written so he never tips into easy caricature, and John Carroll Lynch is equally good as Col. Drummond, the C.O. of the base. The film paints a frustrating picture of what it must be like to serve in the modern military in a bureaucratic position, but instead of casting the military as villains or heroes, it simply tries to capture the contradictions that drive most of their daily behaviors. There is a very deliberate pace to the film that may be intentional, but it still feels like it takes a while for the story to find its focus, which could be an issue for many viewers.

"Camp X-Ray" is going to be a hard commercial sell, but the film has a delicate human heart, and it is ultimately rewarding. I think it's a strong indication of what Stewart can do with the right material, and it makes a case for Maadi as one of the most interesting character actors working right now. Solid, small, and sincere, "Camp X-Ray" offers an important perspective to a difficult conversation.

Vanity Fair:

You likely have strong opinion on Kristen Stewart's acting abilities. The Twilight movies turned you way on or way off. Well, throw that perception out the window. In her new movie Camp X-Ray, Stewart plays a Guantanamo Bay guard who befriends an inmate. You read that correctly. While the movie takes a deliberately apolitical stance and clinical approach to depicting the malaise of Gitmo life, Stewart's brand of introverted, lip-biting naturalism adds a necessary warmth to the movie. Like her character, who retreats from life in Florida to whatever the army may provide, Camp X-Ray is Stewart shedding a skin and allowing herself to be tapped for talent. Director Peter Sattler finds a real person in Stewart, enveloping her in a reality that's more nurturing to her personality than Snow White fantasy lands. She wears her camouflage with a stone cold intensity, slowly breaking down when she opens up to a detainee (played by A Separation's Peyman Moaadi). The movie doesn't dig too far under the surface, but Stewart is a watchable pawn in the prison's mechanics. If you've written her off, realize you've under-appreciated her all this time.

Buzzfeed:

To say Kristen Stewart is a reluctant celebrity would be a laughable understatement. Now shed of the Twilight movies and their accompanying publicity campaigns, she seems determined to become the actress she would have been if Bella hadn’t come into her life. And in Peter Sattler’s new film Camp X-Ray, which had its high-profile (thanks to its star) premiere at Sundance on Friday, Stewart plays, of all things, a guard at Guantanamo Bay. And she is very good in it.

Stewart’s character, Cole, is a cypher at first: For most of the movie, we don’t know her first name, or anything about her. She comes to Guantanamo clearly determined to overcome any fear she has about being there, and to escape her life. She’s angry, stone-faced, energized by the prisoners’ agitations, and wanting to belong among her fellow military comrades. Lane Garrison, who is starting to make a career comeback after his imprisonment for vehicular homicide several years ago, plays Cole’s boss, a leeringly fratty corporal who hates the prisoners (or detainees, as they’re called to avoid abiding by the Geneva Conventions). There is one other female character in the movie, who’s more of a party girl, and we never hear her speak; the two women seem to think they have no reason to talk to each other.
The story’s thrust comes from Cole’s back-and-forths with Detainee 471 — played by Payman Maadi, who is both sinister and beguiling — who tells her his name is Ali. He is handsome, smart, and a good conversationalist; but he also throws shit at Cole. I suspect you will be hearing about Maadi and this role. Let’s hope the film industry can make way for him, and that he doesn’t always have to play a terrorist.

Or a possible terrorist. As we know from the real world, it’s unclear what the current incarcerations at Guantanamo have gotten us — and we also know that President Obama broke his promise to close the prison because no one can figure out what to do with the men inside. That thread of frustration and hopelessness runs through Camp X-Ray, which takes place nine years after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

There’s a Harry Potter metaphor that runs through the film — about Snape — that symbolizes the Sundance movie’s powerful emotional impact and its symmetrically constructed narrative. But it’s also indicative of Camp X-Ray’s tendency to overreach sometimes. Ali begins his interactions with Cole by demanding the seventh and last book in the Harry Potter series; he says he knows it exists, never gets to read it, and needs to know whether Snape is a good guy or a bad guy. It’s the kind of framing that’s designed to pay off in a play-like screenplay like Sattler’s. And it does.

As Camp X-Ray’s story unfolds, and Cole begins to identify with and like Ali, the movie relies on what’s become Stewart’s signature awkwardness. And by the film’s end, Cole has transformed. If that’s Stewart’s goal as well, Camp X-Ray is an excellent start.