Essay Questions

Why are Archie, Elgin and Troy all court marshalled?

At the end of the war, certain agreements were made with Saddam's regime. One of these stated that American soldiers would not help or harbor dissidents in any way. Of course, one man's dissident is a normal person's free speaking citizen, and it was difficult for soldiers to witness the murder of dissidents and rebels by Saddam and his men. This applied to Archie, Tory and Elgin, when they saw dissidents being taken off to the bunker to be imprisoned and killed. However, despite being the right thing to do ethically it was technically an action in contravention of the new agreement, and a direct act of disobedience to their commanders.

The soldiers were also no longer able to engage in combat with Saddam's operatives. Consequently when they engaged in a fire fight with the guards holding Troy hostage, they were technically contravening this new rule as well. Fortunately their part in the gunfight was seen as defense rather than attack given that Troy was being held by the erstwhile enemy.

Russell used many new techniques to film, despite opposition from the studio. What were some of these techniques and why did he use them?

Russell used unconventional methods to film the movie. He chose to use steadicam and hand held cameras instead of movie cameras because he wanted the film to seem like a newsreel rather than a big screen production. He felt that it gave a journalistic angle to the action and also that it emphasized the chaos and terror in the situation.

He also wanted to recreate the peculiar color tinged newspaper pictures that were coming out of the Gulf during the war but was unable to find anyone to do this; to recreate the same look he used a technique known as bleach bypass, which basically leaves off the bleaching function when a color film is processed. This makes the film look like it was originally produced in black and white but has subsequently been colored. It was an unusual way in which to film a large scale production such as this and was considered groundbreaking after the success of the film.