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The War Tapes
Metascore
77 out of 100

Generally favorable reviews - based on 24 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 22 out of 24
  2. Mixed: 2 out of 24
  3. Negative: 0 out of 24
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  1. Chicago Tribune
    Reviewed by: Michael Phillips
    100
    Gripping documentary.
  2. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Mick LaSalle
    100
    There's a lot to process when watching The War Tapes, and that's probably why the documentary gets even better a few days later.
  3. Baltimore Sun
    Reviewed by: Michael Sragow
    100
    It's an experience that blows your mind, clears it and educates it.
  4. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: Jonathan Rosenbaum
    100
    The best documentary to date about the military occupation of Iraq.
  5. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Owen Gleiberman
    91
    The War Tapes captures how the war in Iraq, for all its terrible carnage and death, is in a way too random in its destruction to even be called ''combat.''
  6. Austin Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Toddy Burton
    89
    A powerfully unique film.
  7. New York Post
    Reviewed by: Kyle Smith
    88
    We get to know three of these courageous, funny, smart and perhaps permanently damaged men in a film that largely avoids telling us what to think and makes an effort to get near the truth of the soldiers' experience.
  8. Philadelphia Inquirer
    Reviewed by: Steven Rea
    88
    Must-see stuff.
  9. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Wesley Morris
    88
    Really the film is a deft first-person character study with a war zone for a background.
  10. Christian Science Monitor
    Reviewed by: Peter Rainer
    83
    This film is apolitical in the best sense - it bears witness to a time and a place.
  11. Portland Oregonian
    Reviewed by: Marc Mohan
    83
    The edited footage has an intensity and immediacy you won't find on cable news networks.
  12. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Noel Murray
    83
    The War Tapes falls just short of greatness, because its scope is too limited.
  13. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Mark Olsen
    80
    The film acutely captures the topsy-turvy uncertainty of life during wartime, where there's Burger King and land mines and Pizza Hut and snipers.
  14. The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
    Reviewed by: Rick Groen
    75
    The documentary camera has made repeated trips to occupied Iraq, but never to such raw and honest effect as in The War Tapes. The reason is surprisingly simple: This time, the lens is being pointed not by embedded journalists, but by the American soldiers themselves.
  15. Seattle Post-Intelligencer
    Reviewed by: William Arnold
    75
    In the latest of what is getting to be a booming genre of Iraq war documentaries, director Deborah Scranton gives digital video cameras to five members of the New Hampshire Army National Guard so they can intimately record their year of service in the Middle East.
  16. The Hollywood Reporter
    Reviewed by: Frank Scheck
    70
    The latest in a series of big-screen documentaries dealing with the conflict, and it does so in a particularly involving, fly-on-the-wall manner.
  17. New York Magazine (Vulture)
    Reviewed by: David Edelstein
    70
    See The War Tapes. Maybe this picture can be worth a thousand lives.
  18. L.A. Weekly
    Reviewed by: Tim Grierson
    70
    With its weary disillusionment, The War Tapes shouldn't be criticized for its seeming lack of outrage. Indeed, from the overwhelming grief and anger it uncovers, the film feels appropriately, uncomfortably numb.
  19. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: Dana Stevens
    70
    Whatever your opinion of the war - and however it has changed over the years - this movie is sure to challenge your thinking and disturb your composure. It provides no reassurance, no euphemism, no closure. Given the subject and the circumstances, how could it?
  20. Variety
    Reviewed by: Ronnie Scheib
    70
    The picture's deepest fascination lies in the soldiers' complicated reactions to the war, perceived simultaneously as funny, horrific, stirring and traumatic.
  21. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Jack Mathews
    63
    A gripping, sometimes dramatic, sometimes annoying collection of jerky images and subjective impressions.
  22. TV Guide
    Reviewed by: Ken Fox
    63
    While we at home can't come close to experiencing the war in any real sense, we do come away from Scranton's film with a greater sense of the soldiers' everyday fear, helplessness and horror.
  23. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Ann Hornaday
    60
    Make no mistake: The War Tapes is not an overtly political film. It appears to grind no partisan ax nor score either red or blue points. Whether viewers support the war or not -- or find themselves somewhere in the mushy middle -- this documentary won't fit comfortably into the pigeonholes of their preconceptions.
  24. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: Michael Atkinson
    40
    On a strictly experiential level, Deborah Scranton's The War Tapes is remarkable, tactile, and affecting; as a piece of sociopolitical culture with context and ramifications of its own, it's a worthless ration of war propaganda--ethnocentric, redneck, and enabling.
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User Reviews

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User Score
9.0 out of 10

Universal acclaim- based on 4 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1 out of 1
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 1
  3. Negative: 0 out of 1
  1. VLadimirG.
    8
    In a world where documentaries oftentimes seek to indoctrinate rather than inform it's refreshing to see a movie where the makers suppressed their own biases as much as possible. The result is a nuanced and complex portrait of the war, not the standard one fed the public by each of the parties and from the general news media. Well-worth a watch.… Full Review »
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