Directed by: Dan Krauss.
The Kill Team is a
powerful, disturbing documentary that unfortunately feels somewhat incomplete.
It is about the Maywand District murders – killings that the US Army contends
were the work of one rogue platoon who murdered at least three civilians (including
a 15 year old boy) in cold blood, then planted weapons on them to make the
killings seem like self-defense. The film is told largely from the point of
view of Adam Winfield – who wasn’t quite 18, and was roughly 100 pounds when he
entered the army. He saw what was going on with his platoon – lead by the cold
blooded Sergeant Gibbs – and was both disturbed by their actions, and complacent
in them. He started sending his father Facebook messages telling him what was
going on – and his father tried to call different Army personnel back home to
try and protect his son, but never got anywhere. When another soldier, Justin
Stoner, did what Winfield did not – and actually blew the whistle on what was
happening, Winfield found himself one of the soldiers charged with the murders.
The Kill Team is a
fascinating documentary, as it examines the thin line that exists in war
between justifiable killing and cold blooded murder. When soldiers enter a war
zone, they are expected to kill if necessary – and are celebrated for doing
that – but sometimes they cross that line. The Army wanted everyone to know
that this platoon was one rogue outfit – not representative of the army in
general. And perhaps they weren’t. But in the words of Stoner, they weren’t the
only ones doing this – they were just the ones who got caught.
The movie is a standard
issue documentary – mainly made up of talking heads explaining what happened.
This by itself is disturbing enough – as we hear Winfield, Stoner and other
members of the platoon (some who ended up in jail for murder) describing what happened
in grisly detail made all the more disturbing because of how monotone, and
matter of fact their voices are. This is true even describing the most heinous
of things – like how Gibbs was collecting the fingers of his victims so he
could make a necklace out of them. Most, if not all, of these soldiers are
clearly suffering from some sort of post-traumatic stress disorder.
But they are also, it
must be said, guilty of murder. In their own words, they talk about how they
killed three people who had done nothing wrong, and then planted weapons on
them to make it look like self-defense. They saw all Afghan in inhuman terms,
which is why they were able to do it in the first place. There are photos in
the movie of the men – including Winfield – posing with the bodies of their
victims.
All of this is
disturbing – and this story is clearly an important one to examine in detail.
What is frustrating about the documentary is that at only 79 minutes, it feels
somewhat incomplete. Gibbs was interviewed at all for the documentary – and the
portrait we get of him through the other soldiers paints him as a one
dimensional, inhuman monster – and the movie leaves it at that. Although
Winfield has the most screen time in the movie – and his family is well
represented as well – the movie perhaps goes a little too soft on him in its
effort to paint him in a sympathetic light, instead of pushing him a little
harder.
What we are left with in The Kill Team is a very good documentary that could well have been great – but needed the filmmakers to dig a little deeper, and push a little harder. Perhaps they tried – and just couldn’t get there. If Gibbs didn’t want to be interviewed, there’s not much you can do there. Since the movie admits off the top its relationship with Winfield, and his family, perhaps they also couldn’t push any harder than they did. The Kill Team remains an important documentary – yet another damning portrait of the War on Terror – but it’s not quite as good as it could have been.
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