DOCUMENTARY: The Kill Team (2013)

 

                    “The Kill Team” is a documentary directed by Dan Krauss.  He was inspired by an article by Mark Boal in Rolling Stone.  “The Kill Team:  How U.S. Soldiers in Afghanistan Murdered innocent Civilians” was about the Maywand District murders.  The doc won the Best Documentary Feature at the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival.  It is the story of Adam Winfield.  The 21-year-old Winfield was sent to Afghanistan as a naïve American soldier and ended up a war criminal.

                    Krauss mixes footage with interviews of Winfield, his parents, lawyers, and other members of his unit.  The reason Winfield needed lawyers is he was accused of premeditated murder in Afghanistan.  He had been trained to be a warrior, ended up digging wells, and then transitioned to killer of civilians.  The movie implies he was not the only one to go through this arc.  Our soldiers in Afghanistan were brought up on the adrenalin of video games and expected the same in the Marines.  Instead, they got the boredom of winning “hearts and minds” and the frustration of jihadi hunting.  Meanwhile, IED’s planted by an unknown enemy drained morale.  Into this volatile mixture of boredom, frustration, and unrequited revenge came a new squad leader, Staff Sergeant Calvin Gibbs.  Gibbs, a veteran of Iraq, was not a R.O.E. (rules of engagement) follower. He counseled his men to hold on to captured weapons “in case you need them”.  The charismatic Gibbs will lead his men down a path they wanted to go down.  Well, not all of them.  Winfield was the odd man out.  He wanted to be a whistle-blower.  He contacted his parents and his father, an ex-Marine who had encouraged his son to enlist, who contacted the Marines, but nothing was done.  He was told Adam had to go through the chain of command.  Instead, he succumbed to peer pressure and ended up accused of a war crime.  The documentary chronicles how he got there.

                    The documentary is not a “Free Adam Winfield” effort.  However, he is definitely a sympathetic character.  In fact, the film is empathetic toward most of Winfield’s mates.  They are American boys who were blind-sided by the true nature of modern war.  Unfortunately, they were malleable and it did not take much effort from Gibbs.  Most of his men were looking to get a kill to become “made men”.  In a revealing incident, they encounter a man working in a field.  One of the men sets off a grenade as an excuse to shoot him.  They did not even know if he was anything but a farmer.  They exchange high-fives. 

                    The format is your standard interviews mixed with footage.  Remarkable footage.  It does not appear to be staged, so I have to assume Krauss had access to some amazing videos.  This is not a docudrama with actors recreating the incidents.  Krauss interviewed most of the key participants, with the notable (but understandable) exception of Gibbs.  He was able to sit in on lawyer and psychiatrist meetings.  Krauss also does not interview the rest of the hierarchy of command.  However, the movie does not come off as a hit piece on the military in Afghanistan.  It concentrates on the effects the war had on the soldiers, not on how the war was run.  The interviews are intimate and all the talking is done by the interviewees.  Krauss does not ask questions, at least not on camera.  This enhances the flow.  The men accused of crimes are very candid and well-spoken.  Even the scalp-hunting Specialist Jeremy Morlock is open about his actions.  He is intelligent and not your typical cinematic hick mesmerized by a bullying sergeant.  If you are not familiar with the Maywand District murders case, there is suspense as to the outcome of Winfield’s trial. 

                    “The Kill Team” is one of the best war documentaries I have seen.  It makes for a good companion to “Restrepo”.  Junger and Hetherington were in Afghanistan at about the same time as the incidents in this doc.  It makes you wonder what would have happened if a type like Gibbs had been at that combat outpost.  The movie is thought-provoking.  Some of that thinking will be about what you might have done in the situation Winfield was put in.  Personally, I can see myself in his boots.  Peer pressure is a bitch.   

                    I highly recommend this movie, but I know some will be turned off by it.  If you hate Black Lives Matter, this movie is not for you.  I have read a lot on our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, so I can tell you that although the Maywand District murders were extreme, the behavior of the soldiers was not unheard of.  Some will not watch this documentary because they automatically assume it is anti-American.  The same people who defended the actions of William Calley.  In fact, there is a lot to remind of the My Lai Massacre and the situation in Vietnam.  We didn’t learn our lessons from that war, but with “The Kill Team” maybe we won’t make the same mistakes in the next war.

GRADE  =  A

 

The Kill Team (2019)

“The Kill Team” is a dramatization of the documentary of the same name.  It was written and directed by Dan Krauss, who also did the doc.  It is based on the Maywand District murders in Afghanistan.  Alexander Skarsgard plays a veteran sergeant who takes a platoon under his wing.  He’s not big on the rules of engagement.  Since he is dealing with young American men, they are frustrated with the war and open to his lax views on atrocities.  His foil is a private who tries to maintain his principles, but has to deal with pressure from the charismatic sergeant and his mates.  What would you do?  The documentary is outstanding, the movie is not.  Skarsgard dominates a cast of unknowns.  He is malevolent and his men are from the video game generation.  You can easily see how they could be manipulated.  However, the movie is too shallow in depicting how the murders could have come about.  And it ends before the trials, which was a bad decision.  Watch the documentary before, or instead of.  Actually, you’ll like it better if you haven’t seen the doc.

GRADE  =  C

HISTORICAL ACCURACY:  Much of what follows is from the Rolling Stone article, but I vouched for it from other sources.  The Maywand District murders took place between June, 2009 and June, 2010 in Kandahar Province in Afghanistan.  This was one of the most dangerous areas of Afghanistan.  The platoon, which gave itself the name “the kill team”, had been in country long enough to have suffered from the combination of IED casualties and the frustration of lack of contact with combatants.  It had also been there long enough for many of the men to have developed a hatred for Afghanis.  Although equipped with Strykers, a vehicle designed to give mobility and firepower to infantry, the increasingly powerful IED’s caused their dreams of kicking ass to fizzle.  The envisioned combat assaults failed to materialize and were replaced by schemes to wreak revenge on their tormentors.  Fueled with hashish and binges of Warhammer gaming, many of the men daydreamed about setting up situations to get kills.  These stoned bull sessions led to implementation after the arrival of the charismatic Staff Sergeant Calvin Gibbs.  Gibbs, a veteran of the even nastier insurgency in Iraq, brought his lax views on rules of engagement to his new squad.  Ironically, he was replacing a leader who had had his legs blown off by an IED.  Gibbs openly counseled the men on how to make their dreams come true.  He kept a stash of enemy weapons to be used as plants to justify killings and encouraged his men to get into situations where the drops could be used.  Most of the squad readily came under his spell. 

                        The first of the three incidents involved accolytes Specialist Jeremy Morlock (21 years old) and Pvt. Andrew Holmes (19).  They saw a 15 year-old Afghani working in a field and deemed him worthy of their first kill.  They yelled at him to come towards them, ordered him to stop, and then threw a grenade as justification for opening fire on the unarmed young man.  Instead of giving medical care, their captain ordered one of the men to finish off the “haji”.  The rest of the unit congratulated the heroes and some took pictures with the nude (standard procedure for identification purposes) body.  Gibbs snipped off a finger and gave it to Holmes.   The second incident involved the shooting of an unarmed man who was spotted crouched by the road.  When he behaved suspiciously (he later was determined to be either deaf or mentally disabled), he was shot.  One of Gibbs’ AK-47’s was planted on him.  The third killing occurred during a sweep of a village.  Gibbs pulled an elderly gentleman out of a crowd and brought him to an isolated site.  He had Morlock and Adam Winfield get behind a berm and then threw a grenade at the man.  Morlock and Winfield then opened fire, killing him.  (Winfield later testified that he purposely missed.)  Although these, and other incidents were known to be suspicious by superior officers, they were either overlooked or investigations rubber stamped them.  For instance, when Winfield had earlier contacted his father about the “Kill Team”, his father had contacted the military, but was told either “what do you expect, it’s war” or told his son had to initiate the complaint.  Adam decided to avoid possible retaliation and go with the flow.  He had regained some cred with Gibbs by the time of the third incident so that strategy was seemingly working out when Gibbs gave him the chance to prove himself a team member. 

                        The house of cards came tumbling down when PFC Justin Stoner complained about the excessive use of hashish near his bunk.  His whistle-blowing was guaranteed confidentiality, but soon he was subjected to a beating by the men he had ratted out.  Threatened with more than a bruising next time, Stoner was cowed, but a subsequent examining of his bruises led to an investigation and he opened up about his situation. This led to an investigation about all the incidents involving the unit.  The dam broke when Morlock pleaded guilty to three counts of premeditated murder and testified against Gibbs.  As in the documentary, Morlock was very forthcoming and unremorseful about his actions.  Gibbs declared his innocence, but was sentenced to life imprisonment.  Holmes was sentenced to seven years for murder without premeditation.  Winfield got three years for manslaughter.  As usual, no superior officers wer disciplined.