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National Lottery money and Venice Film Festival Silver Lion awards should be going to much more thoughtful films than this.

The way De Palma stitches this multimedia montage into a damning narrative is cinema at its angry and exhilarating best.

Feels contrived and serves to highlight the limitations of the no-name cast.

An interesting failure, De Palma's film starts well and has moments of exceptional power but ultimately loses itself in its rambling structure. If you haven't already seen it, you'd probably be better off going back to De Palma's Casualties Of War, which

Though the events are gruelingly (and graphically) recreated there's a typical lack of emotional connection which might be forgivable in a thriller but utterly hobbles this supposed cri de coeur. An almost total failure then, but a noble one.

War was ever a Kubrick-ian hell-ride, futile, fundamentally unheroic and de-humanising, but now it’s mocked by a mad multimedia accompaniment innocent of all real ethical, moral and humanitarian value.

Abrave film for De Palma, obviously deeply felt, but the final scene - a steady collage of real pictures of victims of the conflict - offer a more visceral pull than anything that has gone before.

A very easy film to dismiss but there is more to it than meets the eye.

Feels more like a polemic than drama. But at least it hammers home the message that under the right circumstances even the 'good guys' can behave like monsters.