“A Private War”

Susan Granger’s review of “A Private War” (Aviron Pictures)

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Marie Colvin (Rosamund Pike) was a fearless British journalist who put her life on the line to chronicle the horrors of war. She often said that war reporting wasn’t about armaments or troops; it was about the innocent civilians whose lives were being destroyed:

“Covering a war means going to places torn by chaos, destruction and death – and trying to bear witness, even it if means taking risks.”

Colvin grew up in Oyster Bay, Long Island. After graduating from Yale, she landed a job with United Press International, eventually rising to Paris bureau chief. In 1986, she became the Middle East correspondent for London’s Sunday Times, landing exclusive interviews with Libya’s Moammar Khadafy and Yasser Arafat.

In 1999 in East Timor, Colvin was barricaded with refugees in a U.N. compound surrounded by the Indonesian army. While other journalists fled, she dispatched reports. Eventually, the government relented and evacuated the refugees. Colvin was credited with saving some 1,500 lives.

Known as a gregarious, hard-drinking, chain-smoker, Colvin loved wearing expensive La Perla lingerie beneath her combat-khakis. After she lost an eye in a grenade blast with the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, she donned the jaunty black eyepatch that became her trademark.

Married and divorced three times – twice to British journalist Patrick Bishop and once to Bolivian correspondent Juan Carlos Gumucio. who killed himself – Colvin, who suffered from PTSD, died at age 56 in 2012 in Homs, Syria, while reporting about Bashar al-Assad’s mass bombing of civilians.

Rosamund Pike not only replicates Colvin’s distinctly husky-voice but also her gestures, urgency and intensity, ably supported by Jamie Dornan and Stanley Tucci.

Screenwriter Arash Amel has formulaically adapted Marie Brenner’s “Vanity Fair” profile, while director Matthew Heineman uses ghastly flashbacks to reveal the authentic essence of Marie’s story.

On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “A Private War” is a timely 7, since CNN/PBS anchor Christiana Amanpour likens Colvin’s strong convictions to those of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, recently assassinated for speaking the truth.

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