"No Man's Land"

“No Man’s Land”, a foreign film directed by Danis Tanovic and produced in Bosnia-Herzegovina, focuses on the civil war that took place in this country. This film seems different from the typical war film, due to its lack of fighting and a different main focus than normal. A typical war film usually focuses on important battles that may have had a drastic affect on a war, while No Man’s Land focuses on a situation that does not involve any major fight or look at a crucial event that has an effect on the war. Also, a war movie is usually known for having large amounts of weapons firing, planes dropping bombs, or some kind of combat. However, I can only recall a handful of scenes that involved a weapon actually being fired. This makes for an extremely different movie, the main focus is on the relationship of a few people and how they interact with each other.
War movies are similar in that they usually have some kind of objective, hero, or villain but this movie simply looks at the people involved with war, what they go through and how they feel. This makes for an interesting movie. It is revealed that the soldiers and others involved in the situation do not really have anything against each other, just a warped sense of patriotism, the origin of which they do not understand. The factor of realism that you feel watching this movie is further emphasized by the plot only covering one day of events.
Because this movie mostly took place in a trench and involved characters of a few different races, this film lacks local traits and has a global affect. Overall, this is a good movie that presents an original idea on the idea of war.