A film about a female investigative journalist is bound to raise a reaction among viewers, especially when the atrocities filmed are so brutal. But that is the point being made by writer/director Erik Poppe (with added written material by Harald Rosenløw-Eeg and Kirsten Sheridan). The main character in this story is Rebecca (a radiant and brilliant Juliette Binoche), one of the world's top war photographers. She must weather a major emotional storm when her husband Marcus (Nikolaj Coaster-Waldau) refuses to put up with her dangerous life any longer. He and their young daughters – especially Steph (Lauryn Canny) but also the much younger Lisa (Adrianna Cramer Curtis) - need Rebecca, who, however, loves both her family and her work. Rebecca has been angry, since a child, over the way people around the globe focus on the detritus of local news and pay little attention to the horrors that occur daily in the countries besieged by terror. Rebecca resolves to take Steph (at Steph's request) to Kenya where inadvertently they witness terrorist acts even though Rebecca had been promised the area was safe. The result of Rebecca's endangering her daughter results in her marriage dissolving, but other changes in Rebecca's smoldering anger and angst result also.
The film is very well photographed and both Binoche and Coaster-Waldau are excellent. The supporting cast is strong (especially a very small bit part for Maria Doyle Kennedy) and the musical score by Armand Amar is deeply moving. The film places before us the incalculable struggles war correspondents face but at the same time it brings to out attention just how impossibly difficult life in troubled countries can be. Grady Harp December 14
