Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		3.0
Overall		4.0

Hell and Back Again Blu-ray Movie Review

The best years of his life.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman January 23, 2012

Update: Hell and Back Again has been nominated for an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature.

Little boys love to play war, and older boys love to play videogames glorifying battle, and even older boys traipse off to foreign lands where they serve in our armed forces and find out that reality isn’t always as painless as gameplay. That, in a nutshell, is part of the subtext of the riveting new documentary Hell and Back Again, a piece that kind of plays like the filmic flip side to last year’s equally riveting Restrepo. As with Restrepo, Hell and Back Again follows some of our American soldiers into Afghanistan, in this case members of Echo Company, 2nd Battalion, 8th Marines. Again as with Restrepo a fighting force is sent into the far reaches of Afghanistan to try to root out the Taliban insurgency. However, unlike Restrepo, Hell and Back Again actually focuses on just one soldier instead of an entire squadron, and in fact takes the fighting in Afghanistan as only a prelude of sorts, before the documentary gets into the nuts and bolts of what returning servicemen go through as they attempt to rematriculate back into stateside life. Sergeant Nathan Harris is the main character of Hell and Back Again, a leader in Afghanistan who is returned to the United States with a debilitating hip injury which confines him to a wheelchair and requires hours of physical therapy every day. But even more debilitating than his physical injury is Sgt. Harris’ emotional trauma, something which may not erupt with seething diplays of near breakdowns, but which is evident nonetheless. In truly ironic fashion, however, that doesn’t stop Harris from visiting his local Wal-Mart to pick up the latest Call of Duty game, which he plays with some relish at home. As they say, boys will be boys.

Hell and Back Again has become something of a critics’ darling on the festival circle since its release in 2011, but some may wonder if at least part of that reaction can be traced to people assuaging their own guilt by lauding praise on a film about a returning vet. For as remarkable as Hell and Back Again is (and don’t get me wrong, especially with some of the comments I’m about to make—the film is remarkable), it is also decidedly provocative and even screed like at times. Filmmaker Danfung Dennis has a long history in photojournalism, something which makes Hell and Back Again viscerally real a lot of the time, but Dennis, along with editor Fiona Otway make some questionable, though perhaps understandable, decisions along the way which some more sober minded individuals may think undercuts the central portrayal of Harris, his wife, and their adjustments to Harris’ return to the United States.

Dennis and Otway take the title of their piece both literally and figuratively, for aside from the literal aspect dealing with Harris’ tours of duty (he did several) in Afghanistan and then his demobilization stateside, there’s a sort of “meta” meaning attached, albeit perhaps subliminally, by the way Dennis and Otway structure the film. Hell and Back Again ping pongs between Harris’ final tour in Afghanistan, with some frankly extremely disturbing and graphic battle imagery, and his attempts to heal, physically and emotionally, once he’s returned home. The dialectic works beautifully for the most part, but Dennis and Otway “cheat” in a way, particularly in their use of montage and a perhaps objectionable utilization of sound editing whereby Harris is depicted as suffering from auditory hallucinations of his battle experiences. Several times throughout the film, the sounds of gunfire and chaos wash over scenes of Harris’ home life with his wife, and, while undeniably effective, the technique can’t help but raise questions of the audience being unfairly manipulated.

Harris makes for an extremely appealing hero, and his wife Ashley also helps to bring the rigors of welcoming home a wounded soldier fully alive for the audience. But as excruciating as it is to see Harris struggle with his physical and emotional infirmities, perhaps the film’s most moving moment is a service for other Marines who didn’t come back alive. That puts a lot into perspective, and it also makes Harris’ trip to one of his many doctors somewhat alarming by comparison. The doctor helps Harris through some very painful range of motion exercises, and then tells the young Marine that it will be at least another year before can “strap on (a gun) and start killing people again.” That may be the warrior ethos in a nutshell, but after seeing the death and other destruction spread throughout Hell and Back Again, some may wonder if there hasn’t already been enough bloodshed.

Hell and Back Again Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Hell and Back Again is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Docurama and New Video with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. Director (and actual camera operator) Danfung Dennis cobbled together his own camera and sound recording system for the embedded portions of this piece, which Dennis describes in some considerable technical detail in one of the supplements. The film was shot digitally, but incredibly the war sequences were done on a modified camera that was initially meant just for web videos! Despite that seeming drawback, Dennis has managed to get some spectacularly clear and well defined imagery here, something that the Blu-ray, for the most part, reproduces easily. While some of the Afghanistan imagery is somewhat blurry and soft (due in no small part to the omnipresent dust and haze blowing through, not to mention other dirt kicked up by gunfire and helicopter rotors), overall this is a perhaps surprisingly sharp looking transfer. The homebound sequences are much more stable, though a lot of the interior segments shot in poor (to actually no) lighting within the Harris home suffer from crush and a complete loss of shadow detail. But close-ups often reveal a wealth of fine detail (some of the shots of Harris' scar may make some folks a bit squeamish, and one horrifying shot in Afghanistan of a Marine literally blown to pieces is among the most disturbing things I've personally ever seen).

Hell and Back Again Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The opening menu for Hell and Back Again features a blistering DTS-HD Master 2.0 soundtrack which assaults the listener with massed drums and gunfire, but even that opening gives little indication of the force of the actual feature, which is presented with a full DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix. When you take into consideration the cobbled together camera and sound recording units director Danfung Dennis had to make himself in order to get the Afghanistan sequences (where the most bombastic audio occurs, not to state the obvious), it's truly remarkable with how immersive, indeed disturbingly so at times, this track really is. LFE pummels the listener with repeated explosions and gunfire and the panicked calls of Marines trying to find each other or to mobilize effectively against the Taliban is extremely involving. Things are considerably quieter back in the stateside sequences, with the one caveat (discussed in the review above) of Dennis and editor Otway's perhaps questionable decision to utilize sound from the Afghanistan sequences as a sort of aural backdrop for Harris' troubled mental state. But the fact that this track easily handles both the battle scenes as well as the recovery ones speaks to its incredible dynamic range. Fidelity is also excellent throughout, for the most part, though a couple of huge explosions in the Afghanistan battle sequences do tend to distort slightly.

Hell and Back Again Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary features director Danfung Dennis and Fiona Otway, editor. Dennis talks about his photojournalism background, as well as what being embedded with this Marine battalion was like. Dennis and Otway also get into some interesting dialogue about how the editing tended to blend the boundaries between Afghanistan and Hunter's stateside experiences.
• Technical Gear Demo (SD; 5:46) is a really interesting featurette narrated by director Danfung Dennis, where he describes the cameras and auxiliary equipment he used to film Hell and Back Again.
• Willie Nelson's "Hell and Back" (SD; 3:14)
• Did You Kill Anyone? (SD; 7:09) is an eye opening speech by a family liaison coordinator preparing families for the return of their Marine relatives, with some questions from the audience.
• Invisible Wounds (SD; 4:14) is a speech given to Marines telling them what an injury will do them emotionally.
• Collateral Damage (SD; 3:00) is a scene with Harris' squad shooting the breeze.
• Blue Star Families PSA (SD; 00:33) is a promo PSA for the outreach group available to returned vets who are suffering from physical or emotional problems.

Hell and Back Again Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Some of the critics lavishing praise on Hell and Back Again seem to think there has never been a previous film experience showing the emotional turbulence of returning vets. Anyone hear of a little film called The Best Years of Our Lives, folks? Of course Hell and Back Again is a documentary, and it does in fact present some extremely emotional footage of Sergeant Harris and his wife trying to come to grips with Harris' physical and emotional needs. My only real complaint with this piece is its none too subtle manipulation of the audience with regard to its sound design. Did we really need to hear the sounds of battle as a backdrop to Harris holding his head in dismay and begging for the strength not to kill himself? Isn't that kind of up close and personal footage enough, without the imposed aural "commentary"? Other than that, though, this is riveting filmmaking that makes a considerable impact. For anyone who was moved by Restrepo last year, this makes an extremely potent companion piece. Highly recommended.