The Murderous Truth

The film, Collateral Murder, exposes some form of the truth about murders that occurred in Iraq during the war and how horrible that event actually was. Though the picture is shaky, and not always clear it’s understood by the audience that this incident can’t be ruled an accident because of the lack of effort given to find the truth by the soldiers. What stood out to me in the film wasn’t the visuals but instead the audio. The way the soldiers approached the situation seemed unprofessional and like they were eager to kill whatever came in front of them. While the audience might be able to understand how it could be an accident because the distance could make it hard to see, the audio is a different story. The commentary gives the viewers the impression that the soldiers didn’t really care of feel the need to find out who they were about to attack. Comments made like, “Oh, yeah look at those dead bastards” and quoting South Park makes the soldiers seem to be almost villainous and I think the audio exposes more of the truth in this film or what seems to be the truth.

Although I believe the kills made as shown in the film weren’t just the video is sort of deceptive because it doesn’t show what these soldiers went through before and everything after. It only gives us a piece of a bigger story since it doesn’t show the events that took place in that area earlier on and also we aren’t shown how they handle every detail of the aftermath of the event. In war everyone is fighting for what they believe is true, so how can we decide whose reality is the actual truth?