This is one of those films that really gets into the nitty gritty of how war can really change a person. The soldiers involved in this war are really brought to the brink with one of them completely cracking. Although the film leaves the door open on if he was already broken before the term even started or if the service just widened the gap here.

The film takes place near the end of the Korean war. They are all hoping for peace but in the meantime the US army is tasked with making sure that they don’t lose any ground and that Korea really feels their muscle. Each day without a peace treaty is supposed to feel painful. The main character here is Loomis and he has been assigned to a new squad. Everything seems normal at first, except for on guy named Endore. He routinely goes outside at night on solo missions and seems a little off. Loomis quickly finds out that he is going around murdering enemy soldiers…but what can he do about this?

Now you may be wondering what the issue is. Well, there’s a big difference between taking down enemy soldiers mid combat vs seeking them out at night for private executions. Especially with the war winding down. Endore even runs around their dead bodies for some kind of weird ritual and the whole thing seems crazy. Unfortunately the only advice Loomis gets is to stay away from Endore. Yeah…that’s not very helpful now is it? It’s not like Loomis is a captain after all so he doesn’t have much power.

Adding onto the previous issues is the fact that he ends up twisting his foot and is out of action for a bit. Loomis completely froze up during his first fire fight and had to be saved by Endore. Things really couldn’t get much worse for the lead. Meanwhile there is a kid named Charlie who shows up by the camp. Loomis tries to be friends with him but Endore gets in the way as he doesn’t want Charlie to be having any fun. He seems to be training him as a future soldier of war.

It’s all a rather grim state of affairs. Even when the war is just about over, you still have more characters dying. It’s a mix of letting their guards down and just the tough luck of war. Until things are actually resolved, there is always going to be some danger. The captain did his best to stress this but it still didn’t result in a perfect outcome. You definitely can’t say that the film was trying to glamorize the war at all.

This movie is fairly quick so it all goes by rather quickly. After all there is only one-two main fights here and most of it is about the characters just trying to survive. At one point the Koreans launch a fairly big offensive where they just start bombing everything. They unleash massive amounts of firepower while Loomis and the other soldiers have to hunker down. It’s a tough mental battle as well because you don’t know when the enemies will run out of ammo and stop firing.

I think this probably would have been enough story to fill in the plot but I suppose adding in the crazy soldier helped to add more explosive drama in. It’s really hard to deal with a villain on your side during war time. There just isn’t any time to worry about that. The captain did good in taking decisive action when he had to. Loomis was yelling at him to stop and all but that was a moment of kill or be killed. I don’t believe there was any time to waver there even if it did result in another death. It was regrettable but his hand was forced at that point.

It just would have been nice if they could have saved the kid as well. I don’t think the orphanage life would have been great but Loomis was right that it would still be worlds better than trying to survive in the middle of nowhere on a war torn path. At least the kid would have had a chance and could have learned how to be a kid after that was stolen away from him. Letting Charlie remain in the wilderness definitely added onto the tragedy of the story. Made this into a full on sad ending rather than being ambiguous.

I was surprised that Loomis didn’t really have a big final scene though. After he froze during the first battle, I kind of thought that he would be the one to land the final shot. Show that he was now ready for what war entailed and that could be the mixed message about how war changes everyone in some way. Instead he was mostly helpless at the end anyway. I know it was a tough moment so I’m not trying to blame him too much but he really never got to step up.

Overall, I would definitely recommend War Hunt. It’s a pretty good film. It’s intense without being exploitive or anything like that. You can understand the grim tone and what has happened to the characters without the movie having to go all out in spoon feeding the answers to you. I would also say that the short length of the movie helps prevent it from dragging on. I don’t think you would have benefitted much from an extra 30 minutes as it would have really just been more detailed moments for the plots you already had at the ready.

Overall 6/10