NO MAN'S LAND (2001)  ***

Reviewed 12/9/01

Men on different sides of the Bosnian-Serbian war get trapped together in a trench between the Bosnain and Serbian lines.  One of them cannot move because he is on a mine (notably made in the good ol’ U.S. of A.) that threatens to kill them all.  A United Nations drowned in bureaucracy gets called to provide resolution.  Then the press rolls in.  The movie starts off like Wolfgang Petersen’s Enemy Mine, then looks at the power of media and how it can exploit, and finally becomes an indictment of the West’s pretensions to morality.   Of course the greatest indictment comes against war itself, and writer-director Tanovic gets across the confusion of men caught up in a war neither understands or really wants to be a part of.  The movie is slightly undermined by putting polemics over character as if it had to be an either-or, and not unrelated to this, the film’s total lack of subtlety.