Korengal

Most fascinating is the seemingly unanimous feeling that while deployment in Korengal was hard and heartbreaking, these veterans would do it all again just to stay together, to remain brothers who mutually understand something no on else will ever know.

Not quite a coda to Sebastian Junger's and Tim Heatherington's...Restrepo - more of a commentary track, or a series of annotations.

In a series of expertly edited interviews conducted with infantrymen on their way home after a year in the Korengal Valley, Junger exposes us to the war's psychological toll.

"Restrepo" felt like the story of how boys become men. "Korengal" feels like the story of how strangers become family.

Those of us who haven't served on active duty can't know what it's like. Taken together, "Restrepo" and "Korengal" brings us about as close to the experience as we can, or would want, to get.

The film is a tribute to the courage, tenacity and sorrow of the men with their boots on the ground in a place very far away.

While much insights are the same. . .now grudging honesty from African-American soldiers on differences [and] barely disguised cultural condescension to native Pashtuns.

If the first film was made more for civilians who have never experienced war, the second seems to be aimed at veterans who want to reflect on their experiences.

Remarkably frank, Korengal espouses no one clear sentiment towards war.

Reminds us that Americans not very different than ourselves took the military as a job of work.

"Korengal" revisits some of the men featured in the original, talking to them stateside about their experiences. They make poignant if not unprecedented insights into the warrior code, and into the complicated lives of stateside veterans.

"Korengal" doesn't have the immediacy of "Restrepo," but it's frequently affecting, as well as being a remembrance of just how young the people are we send into harm's way.