Movie Review: Point and Shoot

In this age of narcissism, you'd be hard-pressed to find a better subject than Matthew VanDyke. 

With no filmmaking experience and limited knowledge of the region, the sheltered Baltimore native embarked on a "crash course in manhood" by motorbiking his way across the Middle East and creating a documentary of his travels. This would almost certainly have been a terrible film seen by no one, if not for the fact that VanDyke befriended a Libyan man and joined him as a rebel fighter when the country's civil war broke out in 2011. VanDyke was promptly captured by Muammar Qaddafi's forces and spent six months in solitary confinement, but upon his release he returned to combat: to fight and to film what would become Point and Shoot. 

Back on the front lines, VanDyke's extended selfie took a more dramatic (and disturbing) turn, as the self-styled soldier filmed himself shooting machine guns and running from enemy fire. At what would become the climax of his footage, another rebel filmed him as he attempted to snipe a pro-Qaddafi fighter from a window. He missed—and then went outside to record a to-camera about his feelings on what had just happened. 

But VanDyke is not actually the director of Point and Shoot. He handed over his footage to professional documentarian Marshall Curry (of Street Fight and If a Tree Falls), and the press notes say he didn't have creative control over the film. But while Curry employs his filmmaking expertise to thread together VanDyke's story, and apparently spent "20-something" hours interviewing him, he does little to challenge or illuminate VanDyke's self-aggrandizing view of his adventures.

There's something to be said for a director who refrains from editorializing. But because VanDyke has set the narrative, the film ultimately explores little of how the experience has affected him in the long run. Nor does it ask how, if at all, his presence contributed to the revolution. We also learn almost nothing about Libya, VanDyke's fellow soldiers or the war itself (which, of course, is still ongoing—a fact not mentioned in the film, in which the war seems to end when the American goes home). 

All that said, Point and Shoot is still a very compelling documentary—I mean, it's first-person footage from a guy with no combat experience who has a camera in one hand and a gun in the other. But it's also one that lacks perspective and depth.

Critic's Grade: B-

SEE IT: Point and Shoot opens Friday at Living Room Theaters.

WWeek 2015