Deborah Scranton had a good idea with “The War Tapes,” the 2006 documentary about the Iraq war that she made from video shot by soldiers themselves, and she shows that it’s still an illuminating gimmick in “Bad Voodoo’s War,” a “Frontline” installment on Tuesday night.
Don’t let the conventional-looking first few minutes, in which Ms. Scranton sets up the premise, fool you; this is a very different view of the war than you’ll see on the nightly news. The stars and cinematographers are with a unit that calls itself the Bad Voodoo Platoon, and they recorded their deployment last year as part of the much-discussed troop surge.
Most are veterans of previous tours, and one interesting thread is how irked they are by the way the war has changed. Instead of kicking in doors and making snap judgments about who the enemy is, they are in a restrained mode that at one point has the platoon leader waving at Iraqis he thinks have just tried to kill his men.
The platoon draws the seemingly mundane duty of escorting trucks around the country, but in this roadside-bomb-based war, of course it’s not mundane at all. Ms. Scranton, aided by creepy nighttime video, builds the tension effectively toward the inevitable explosion, pausing along the way to fill in the back stories of a few of the soldiers.
Ms. Scranton’s film doesn’t end in a climactic, World War II-style battle; the hell of this war is in the uncertainty, and in the details. There is, for instance, what Sgt. First Class Toby Nunn, more or less the film’s leading man, tells his troops just before they hit the road about the extra “combat action tourniquet” they carry.
“Go ahead and take that extra out now and put it on your door-side appendage,” he says. That way, when the roadside bomb goes off, it will already be on the leg, providing a better chance of stopping the bleeding before it turns fatal.
BAD VOODOO’S WAR
On most PBS stations on Tuesday night; check local listings.
Written, produced and directed by Deborah Scranton; Michael Sullivan, Frontline executive producer for special projects; Clover & A Bee Films produced for Frontline and Independent Television Service.