PLOT: A young army private (Nat Wolff) faces a crisis of conscience when his platoon, under their new Sergeant (Alexander Skarsgård), participates in the murder of civilians in Afghanistan.
REVIEW: THE KILL TEAM comes from documentarian Dan Kraus, with this being the narrative version of a well-received doc of the same name he made back in 2014. It tells the harrowing true story of the Maywand District killings in a straightforward manner, opting to steer clear of melodrama, while simultaneously providing a nuanced look at the life of a soldier and what it would be like to be caught up in war crimes, such as the ones depicted here.
Most of us will never be faced with the grueling choice Wolff’s fictionalized Andrew Briggman is faced with. On the one hand, he knows something bad is going on, but if he blows the whistle is his unit going to turn on him? Will he be next? And what will happen to his friends in the platoon? These are weighty things to struggle with, and what makes THE KILL TEAM unique is that it sticks closely to the facts established by Kraus’s previous documentary. While plagued by his conscience, Briggman’s also no whistleblower – he’s scared. By doing little, does that make him as guilty as the men actively participating in the killings?
It’s a murky question to answer, and Kraus’s film never condemns Briggman for his inaction. Likewise, the men in his platoon are dealt with compassionately, including the gung ho soldier, Rayburn, who takes the most active role in the killings, played by a scene-stealing Adam Long. He has a great scene where confronted by Briggman, he admits that even though he’s killing he doesn’t feel like a murderer, as it’s not really “him” doing the killing, but rather the unit as a whole, citing the “conscience round” theory.
As such, the film offers unique insight into the mindset of some of the soldiers involved, although to a degree the movie suffers from a low budget and limited scope beyond Wolff’s character, with Skarsgård’s Sergeant emerging as a two-dimensional monster and not much more. Even still, he’s chillingly effective as the seemingly laid back sarge, who helps his grunts score the best hash but also demands absolute loyalty, which one grunt finds out the hard way after he tries to blow the whistle on one of their more innocuous activities. Skarsgård is a massive, overbearing looking figure, making him effective in the role, but at the same time he never really feels human. More insight into his character and what made him into what he became would have been welcome given that the film only runs eighty-seven minutes.
While imperfect, THE KILL TEAM is still a solid look into the psychology of a soldier placed into an impossible position, and Kraus’s documentary aesthetic is all over the film, with him eschewing the use of too much music or anything too flashy of melodramatic. He presents the facts – as he sees them – and allows you to make up your mind about what’s right and what’s wrong as far as blowing a whistle goes.