The Movie Restrepo follows the men of the Second Platoon, Battle Company of the 503rd infantry of the United States Army. The movie follows these men through their fifteen-month deployment in the Korengal valley, one of the deadliest places in the war, including daily fights with the enemy.
In the movie, there are a lot of things that I was not expecting, but what surprised me the most was how much fighting there was. Before viewing the film, I was under the belief that engagements with the enemy were very slim and only while soldiers were on patrol. After viewing the film, I found out that, that was not the case. The soldiers at Out Post Restrepo were seeing three to five engagements a day. It was not just the amounts of engagements that surprised me. It was also the range at which these engagements were which I was also not expecting. In some points of the movie the Second Platoon were engaged in combat with the enemy being as close as twenty yards away. I always thought that when soldiers got into combat it was about three hundred yards away, not twenty-five. The last thing that surprised was how the Army worked with the local elders and how much the elders were so unwilling to push out the Taliban. Before watching the movie, I thought that the afghan citizens wanted the Taliban out of the country. That was not the case. For most people in Afghanistan many of their family members were a part of the terrorist organization so they were unwilling to give up and kick out their family members. Even though the Army was not able to drive out the Taliban, I still feel that their deployment was worth it.
I believe that the United States Army’s deployment to the Korengal valley was worth it. I believe that even though they were not able to force the Taliban out of the valley, they