War Story

Director: Mark Jackson
Year Released: 2014
Rating: 1.5

War photographer Lee (Catherine Keener) walks around Sicily in a fog following a horrible incident in which she was allegedly detained and a colleague (lover?) was killed and she can't snap out of it. I had to double check with the movie's bio page to find out if the above description is, in fact, close to correct, because the screenplay for this (by Jackson and Kristin Gore) is hardly functional: cryptic and weak in terms of establishing context, relying entirely on Keener's smoking, spooked character to drift around looking for something to do (take pictures, wander around the hotel, help a pregnant immigrant from Libya who does not want to be helped). Ben Kingsley shows up for a single scene and doesn't seem like he knows what to do either. This has as much to do with an examination of PTSD as SpongeBob SquarePants has to do with oceanography.