Blessed by Fire

The film equivalent of an adult contemporary song.

The morbid and gripping war film Blessed by Fire is well worth a look.

Illuminated by Fire is a watchable if none-too-penetrating analysis of the traumatizing effects of a war largely forgotten.

Tristn Bauer's new war movie has an even more bitterly ironic title in Spanish: Iluminados por El Fuego or Enlightened by Fire.

The battlefield sequences unfold with surreal horror, while the human bonding in the foxholes emerges tenderly.

Tristan Bauer's film portrays the Falklands War in 1982 as a mismanaged, vainglorious spasm of nationalism.

For an event rarely thought about outside of its involved countries, the film is a remarkable achievement.

Bitter recollections of Argentina's ill-fated attempt to win control of the Malvinas from Great Britain.

Even though Blessed by Fire is undoubtedly well-made and sincere in its efforts to shine a light on this farcical episode, it also doesn't add anything to the "war is hell" genre.

As a Falklands vet is faced with the brutal realization of the tragic futility of war and its aftermath, old wounds are opened and bleed metaphorically into the present.