The Marie Colvin biopic is a study in compulsion
The truth hurts, and the standard of truth in war reporting requires eyewitness accounts of suffering and death. Marie Colvin of the Sunday Times of London, killed at Homs, Syria in 2012 in a targeted bombardment by Assad’s army reports, was the most accomplished war reporter of her time, and saw more war than most soldiers. Matthew Heineman’s A Private War, with Rosamund Pike as Colvin, is a cruel and haunting study in compulsion — the compulsion to tell the truth, the compulsion to live near death, and the compulsion to repeat the experience until death gets too near.
