Some Gave All: A Review of “Danger Close”
Deployment after deployment, the U.S. has sent its men and women into battle. Yet, who tells their stories to America, the country that sent them into battle, their families that waited at home, sometimes for loved ones that never returned, and to the world that often has a skewed view of America and the mission of its Armed Forces. So often, the story of the American fighter has come to be told in ninety-second news clips that can hardly convey the intensity of a Soldier preparing for a mission, the rush when the enemy is spotted or the tears and sorrow when a comrade is wounded or killed in action. Alex Quade, an award winning free-lance war correspondent who has covered special operators since 2001, took on the mission of telling the story of an Army Special Forces A-Team in “Danger Close” with an objective she described as “telling the story so America will not forget.
While the movie is billed as “Inside Special Ops,” it only touches on three of the five main missions which special operations forces conduct daily: direct action, combat search and rescue, and foreign internal defense. The three missions are conducted without any attempt to provide the viewer with much context or reference to the mission or what makes one mission different than the other. The missions are only lightly described to support the story of a Green Beret who becomes the namesake for the team’s outpost after he is killed in action, Quade’s trip to visit with the soldier’ s family, and lastly Quade’s personal story of working as a combat reporter.
As an example, the ODA’s mission early in the movie is direct action against Sunni and Shia militias including Al Qaeda in Diyala Province, Iraq. Later in the movie, the same ODA is deployed to Taji where the US trained Iraqi security Forces. Two very different missions in two very distinct areas of Iraq, but Quade does not describe the differences or help the viewer understand what is happening.
Quade concentrates the story on ODA-072 of the 10th Special Forces Group and the namesake of its combat outpost in in Diyala Province. The direct contact mission was to counter Shia and Sunni militias. Later, the team returns to Iraq with the foreign internal defense mission to train Iraq Security Force members. The story becomes personal as Quade digs into the personal story of how the ODA selected the name for the COP, named after the team’s engineer Staff Sargent Robert Pirelli, who built the outpost and was later killed in action. This part of the movie brings to life the sacrifices and tragedies every operator and their family faces as a smaller and smaller percentage of Americans have endured the deployment of a loved one.
The story is framed within an interview where Quade is asked set-up question to which she responds and sets the stage for the next scene of the movie. Quade uses this format to describe the difficulties of a female free-lance reporter who lacks the power of the network to move about the battlefield and is often frustrated and must work around public affairs officers that seem determined to thwart her mission to tell the story; a story that has in the past often been cloaked in the secrecy of special operations. However, the question must be asked, has the US Special Operations community departed from being the “quiet professional” in recent movies.
Danger Close exposes the difficulty of the mission in today’s battles. Challenges from the hidden threat of IEDs to the dangers of kicking doors and searching local families’ homes for weapon caches and documents that associate them with AQI or the Shia militias. It has been a different kind of war which has continued to morph, and the ODA operators prove their adaptability with every mission.
Danger Close was a difficult film to watch. From the downing of the first helo in Afghanistan, I felt as though I was back in the fray. I didn’t need the sand and heat to feel I was there even though I was watching the movie in a room with members of several Special Forces associations, a Gold Star wife and other veterans. The film tells a story of the 1% that are fighting today’s wars, but it lacks the deep dive into special operations that the viewer may expect from the movie promo. Danger Close is a worthwhile movie to watch, especially by the policy makers that commit our troops to battle.
Dave Mattingly is a member of the Military Writers Guild and national security consultant. He retired from the US Navy with over thirty years of service. He served for over three years as a senior intelligence analyst with Multi-national Forces Iraq. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of Defense or the US Government.
