Armadillo is this summer’s hidden gem

Keenan Van der Griend
Contributor
Last year, a Danish documentary premiered at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival about the war in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, other than word of mouth and discussion on certain Internet forums, the film did not find widespread success. That movie, Armadillo, is one of the hidden gems of the summer.

 
 
Another in the slew of war films released over the past decade, it’s a documentary about the hardships, stress, and trauma faced by a team of Danish soldiers in the Middle East. The title comes from the military base that the soldiers operate out of in Helmand province, Afghanistan, but the film begins a few days before their actual deployment.
Once they arrive in FOB Armadillo, they are warned by the old guard of the dangers they have faced. After a month, though, it becomes clear to the new soldiers that most of their time is spent doing reconnaissance and patrols.
However, Armadillo becomes much more than a traditional war documentary, especially compared to the American Restrepo which was released the same year, by merging fact with fiction. An audience tends to lose interest watching idle soldiers for two hours. The directors of Armadillo attempt to counter this boredom by introducing a traditional plot structure to the film. The film builds up anticipation of an actual confrontation with the insurgents, and yes, it does pay off.
The filmmakers managed to take real events and composite them well enough to craft a traditional hero’s journey of Good vs. Evil. The Danish soldiers, our heroes, band together to fight evil, the insurgents. To increase dramatic tension, the evil is never actually seen, leaving only traces behind. Clues include weapons caches, random village attacks, and improvised explosives.
An important subplot in the film is the relationship between the local population and the soldiers. The soldiers realize that if they lose the villagers’ trust, they lose the battlefield. There are a few nerve-wracking moments where the audience believes that the Danes are doomed to lose control of the populace. In some cases, the combat against the Taliban results in the death of livestock, for which the villagers demand compensation.
The film creates great tension similar to that of Predator, wherein  people keep dying, but no one can see the thing killing them. The mothers of the soldiers receive these updates, which brings in a highly emotional element. By the third month of the tour, the members of the team all wish to return home, but realize they are trapped. Nevertheless, morale is restored by daily doses of first-person shooters, pornography, and stories from back home.
After all this waiting and frustration, the soldiers finally have a head-on battle with opposing Taliban forces, which is probably one of the most well done performances of an embedded camera crew I’ve ever seen. It’s a lot like the last fight in Saving Private Ryan, (with less soldiers), but the fact that it’s real heightens the intensity. The film shows the height of the action through a more narrative-based lens, and later reverts to its documentary origin, showing the aftermath of the battle, with uncensored dead bodies of those killed by the Danes. The directors manage to make the film interesting without glorifying war.
It’s a shame that Armadillo had such a limited release. I’d recommend this film to foreign film lovers, but note that Armadillo is heavily influenced by other western films and documentaries. Those who like documentaries will definitely enjoy the unique style this film assumes, but sticklers for accuracy will have a harder time enjoying this. Armadillo speaks to an audience most documentaries don’t cater to: the action film audience.