It's 1988. War photographer Mark Walsh (Colin Farrell) is in Kurdistan with best friend David. They photograph triage where Dr. Talzani mercy kills his terminal patients. Mark is eager to join the expected Peshmerga offensive but David is desperate to go home to his pregnant wife Diane (Kelly Reilly). They seemingly split up. David returns to Dublin alone. His girlfriend Elena Morales (Paz Vega) is horrified by his state. He claims to got washed away in a river and that David left days before him. Mark is deteriorating and Elena calls in her psychologist grandfather Joaquín Morales (Christopher Lee) for help. She is estranged from him for his work with the Spanish dictatorship.

There is a good story here. The characters and the actors are solid. The central secret gets a bit tiresome. It's obvious something happened but the reveal is disappointing. The actual incident should be much more Mark's fault to justify his overwhelming guilt. In reality, he is only fractionally at fault and a really small fraction at that. I'm also not a fan of a lot of psychobabble talk especially when the movie is only geared towards the secret. Elena and her grandfather have a much better talk. His explanation of his work in Spain is one of the highlights.

Mark (Colin Farrell) and David (Jim Sives) are war photographers working in Kurdistan during their war against Iraq (1988?). They are long time friends. David's wife (Kelly Reilly) is expecting. During the photographing, David loses his stomach for the war zone and decides to turn back while Mark keeps on working on his Pulitzer. Mark gets badly injured and manages to limp home after being in a Kurdish field hospital for a few days, one where the doctor has limited resources and regularly performs mercy killings. When Mark arrives home, David who left before him isn't there and Mark is acting strange, a case of PTSD.

Christopher Lee, feigning a Spanish accent acts as a psychologist to get to the truth, one that most viewers should have already figured out.

Having never been in a war zone, or know anyone who has PTSD, I couldn't relate to the movie as well as someone in that situation. For them, I am sure this film has more meaning. I found the film to be slow moving. Christopher Lee and Colin Farrell were not convincing in their roles. I didn't like the constant crying piano sound track. I don't feel the film really deals with PTSD, but rather exploits it to create a mediocre film. Unless you want to watch a film that deals specifically with PTSD, I would suggest something else.

F-bomb, groping, nudity (Colin Farrell)

If you like this movie, you should go out and buy/rent "No man's land" from the same director. I haven't seen "L'Enfer" yet, but I'm sure that one is good too. At first I was amazed by the actors at hand here, but the script proves to have been a big part in their involvement. The dialogue and the delivery is just spot on.

And when you watch Christopher Lee going one-on-one with Colin Farrell, you just wish there could have been more scenes, with those two together. There is a great chemistry surrounding them and when they grace the screen together it's almost like magic. There is this constant pushing and delivering, that makes those scenes special.

But of course, the rest of the movie is not lacking in tension and/or good performances. Quite the contrary. Especially the doctor and the others involved all have there scenes. The editing does the rest and makes this more than above average.