Review: A Private War

Marie Colvin was a woman who lived dangerously. A famed foreign war correspondent for The Sunday Times, she reported from the frontlines of every major conflict from Iraq to Afghanistan to Syria. "I cared enough to go to these places, and write something that would make someone else care as much about it as I did," she says at the beginning of A Private War, a biopic spanning nearly a decade of her life.

Indeed, her commitment to documenting the horrors of war was compulsive and one that could easily be categorised as an addiction. Yet, as documentary filmmaker Matthew Heineman conveys in his narrative film debut, Colvin was most alive and engaged in the war zones, where violence and death could come in a turn of a second. Between battlefields, she barely functioned, numbing her trauma with booze and sex. Played with a nearly incandescent ferocity by Rosamund Pike, Colvin was an intriguing mass of contradictions. She wanted a husband and children, but was most likely unfit to be either a wife or mother. She feared growing old, but also couldn't stomach the thought of dying young. She hated being in the combat zones, but she was compelled to see it for herself even if it meant risking her physical and mental safety.

A Private War tracks Colvin as she heads off to the latest conflict and, though this narrative tactic may border on repetitive, it instead demonstrates how each assignment leaves a scar, some of which are more visible than others, and how the cumulative effect is akin to having PTSD. How can Colvin involve herself in the story without being too involved? It's a tremendously fine line, and the film demonstrates how increasingly blurred that line becomes. Yet there was a humanity that remained within Colvin even when she was in the midst of self-destruction. The bond she forged with freelance photographer Paul Conroy (Jamie Dornan) allowed her to let down her guard a little, as did her affair with American Tony Shaw (Stanley Tucci).

Yet her greatest love remained her mission to find the truth and make millions of readers aware of the atrocities going on in the world. A Private War has its missteps - Faye Marsay's role as a younger colleague serves more a device for Colvin to talk about the human cost of war rather than as an actual character; the scenes on the home front are somewhat clunky - but it remains an absorbing watch thanks in large part to Pike's deft portrayal of a rebellious, intelligent, outspoken, and often fearsome woman whose daring and dedication would eventually cost her her life.

A Private War

Directed by: Matthew Heineman

Written by: Arash Amel; based on the 2012 Vanity Fair article, "Marie Colvin's Private War" by Marie Brenner

Starring: Rosamund Pike, Jamie Dornan, Tom Hollander, Stanley Tucci, Corey Johnson, Faye Marsay, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Greg Wise