Camp X-Ray

Director: Peter Sattler

Cast: Kristen Stewart, Payman Maadi, Lane Garrison, John Carroll Lynch.

Genre: Drama

 

 

CAMP X-RAY movie carries the theme of innocent people who are prisoners for a crime that they never committed. I watched this movie because I'd heard good things about it. After 9/11 Muslims community had to go through intolerable levels of hardships in the West which resulted in chaos in the country. Anyway, I came across the list of 2016 movies, so I checked it out by the name of Kristen Stewart movie. This is an excellent movie. It is a powerful, emotional drama set at the Guantanamo Bay prison. It avoids political portrayal and gets down the human interaction between guards and prisoners while avoiding the usual prison clichés.

Kristen Stewart plays Amy Cole, a woman from a small town who joins the U.S. Army and ends up at Guantanamo Bay (known as Gitmo). At the beginning of the film, she is a true rookie. She has just joined in and knows nothing about the environment of Gitmo. At the orientation, the officer informs her and the others they are not here to prevent escape. They are there to keep the prisoners alive. The cells are under surveillance all the time to prevent suicides.

Cole experiences a nasty welcome on the first day at Gitmo, being hit in the face by a large, powerful prisoner. One of her jobs is to provide books to the prisoners from the library. She encounters a talkative prisoner, Ali (Peyman Moaadi) who constantly asks for a copy of the seventh Harry Potter book, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.” Ali had read all the other Harry Potter books, but not the seventh part. The Harry Potter books are seemingly famous among the Gitmo prisoners. The books are a constant subject of conversation between Cole and Ali.

The guards were strictly told not to share their names or any personal information with the detainees, especially prisoners like Ali, who have been at the prison so long they know more about what is going on there than the guards do. Ali, who is literate, a college passed-out student is known as a troublemaker by the guards. Ali doesn't recognize the authority of the guards and rejects to cooperate with them. At one point, he becomes angry and throws his own crap on Cole.

A hunger strike is also depicted in the film, and the force-feeding of the striking prisoners, using feeding tubes inserted through the noses of the prisoners, who are held rigidly in restraints. Cole begins to hate being at Gitmo. During a dinner conversation with another guard, she expresses that she'd rather be in a war zone than continue being a guard at Gitmo. She comes to know of another guard who tried to commit suicide.

Growing extremely agitated and unhappy, she reports a complaint against one of her superiors, corporal Ransdell (played by Lane Garrison of “Shooter”) who compels her to watch Ali strip naked while taking a shower, a situation that neither she nor Ali is comfortable with. She is called in to see Colonel James Drummond (John Carroll Lynch of “Paul”) concerning the complaint. It turns out the colonel understands the situation better than she does.

There is a final, dramatic situation that needs to be resolved before Cole ships out to her next assignment. Kristen Stewart acting in this movie is superb, highlighted by the strong lead performances by Kristen Stewart and Peyman Moaadi. The supporting performances are also good. Writer and Director Peter Sattler has crafted a powerful, moving drama. One of the best films of 2014. This film rates an A.

Before I saw “Clouds of Sils Maria,” I had seen Kristen Stewart mostly in those dreadful “Twilight” films. I thought she couldn't act. Turns out, those were just bad stories and scripts. She was playing a passive character, written with no emotional range. After seeing movies like “Clouds of Sils Maria” and “Snow White and the Huntsman”, I believed that Stewart can act, and she proves it again here, with a great performance.

 

-Sajid Ali

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