“You will refer to them as detainees, not prisoners.”
Written & Directed by: Peter Sattler
Starring: Kristen Stewart, Payman Maadi, Lane Garrison, John Carroll Lynch
The H-Bomb: Newly enlisted recruit Amy Cole (Stewart) finds herself assigned to guard duty at the infamous Guantanamo Bay detention center. The detainees (as opposed to prisoners) are all from the Middle East, and she has been given a crash course on how to deal with them; go ahead and talk to them, but don’t let them inside your head, don’t try to subdue one on your own, and be careful, because they have a tendency to toss fecal matter in your general direction.
Despite taking the advice to heart, Cole still finds herself woefully under-prepared for the reality of what guard duty will be like in this place, especially since most of these strict Muslim men strongly object to the notion of being guarded by a woman. On her very first shift, she gets elbowed in the face and assaulted with a wide variety of bodily fluids. Still, she manages to keep her composure and appear unfazed… and then she meets Ali (Peyman Moaadi).
Like the other detainees, Ali is a suspected terrorist, a suspected terrorist who has been held in his tiny cell for nearly a decade, and has a reputation for being a trouble-making pain in the ass. At first, he grills Cole over why the library doesn’t carry the last Harry Potter book, and goads her by calling her “Blondie.” Initially, she tries to ignore him, but as the months wear on, a connection forms. The more time they spend together, separated only by a cell door and a small window, the more Cole finds herself doing what she was warned not to do, developing a personal relationship with a detainee…
Camp X-Ray, thankfully, is not a political film. Gitmo is a steaming hot potato, and the notion of the U.S. detaining people without trial is certainly touched upon. Fortunately, first time writer-director Sattler opts out of turning this into a sanctimonious sermon in favor of telling a human story. A human story about two people from two completely different worlds, on different sides of a cultural and political divide, who seemingly have nothing in common.
Yet, the longer they’re together, the less they see each other as simply jailer and detainee. They see each other as people, with more in common than they would’ve ever known. Had they met under different circumstances, Cole and Ali could have become friends, and perhaps something more. On paper, it sounds more than a little contrived. However, Sattler instills his two protagonists with such depth and complexity, that the relationship that gradually develops between the two of them feels utterly natural and authentic. It doesn’t hurt that his leads are portrayed by two terrific actors.
Yes, you read that correctly, Kristen Stewart is excellent here. Before you go on some Twilight-related tirade, just remember that she has shown herself to be a perfectly capable actress outside of Twilight in the past. In Camp X-Ray, she delivers a career best performance. She’s forced to appear stoic, yet underneath that we sense her vulnerability, that she feels as though she’s in over her head, in this job, in this place. If Stewart keeps choosing projects as smart as this one, and keeps coming out with performances this strong, she’ll shake the stigma of that Stephenie Meyer garbage in no time.
As fine as Stewart is, however, the real discovery of Camp X-Ray is Payman Maadi. As Ali, aka Detainee 471, Maadi is simply a revelation. He flawlessly embodies a man who is decent at heart, but whose years of incarceration have made him bitter and tested his sanity. Even though he comes off as a complete dick at first, we can’t help but ultimately be won over by him, and that is due in no small part to Maadi’s humanistic performance. My only issue with the character, is that it’s clear he’s no terrorist… personally, I’ve would’ve preferred it had the film remained a bit more ambiguous on that point.
Any missteps that the film makes are made whenever story goes outside of Cole’s interactions with Ali, to show her with her fellow guards and superiors. Lane Garrison plays an obnoxious, bigoted asshole of a Corporal, who gets off on harassing Cole, Ali, and just about anyone else who has the misfortune of coming into contact with him. Meanwhile, the great character actor, John Carroll Lynch, shows up for a couple of scenes as the ineffectual, apathetic commanding officer running the compound, who only seems to care about getting through the day without fucking up. These side characters come off as one-dimensional stereotypes who belong in a truly lesser movie.
Clocking in at just under two hours, the film is rather slow and drawn out at times, though that is necessary in getting across what life is like at Gitmo… that it can be tedious, and monotonous, with a whole lot of nothing happening. The final shot of the film, that plays out during the closing credits, really says it all. Intimate and understated, Camp X-Ray takes a potentially volatile political topic and puts a human face on it, making for an utterly absorbing sleeper driven by two exceptional, award-caliber performances.
