UNDERSTANDING THE BATTLE

Ezra

"War is a crime," says the traumatized teenage lead in Ezra, "but I did not start it." Standing before a hardened “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” in Sierra Leone to answer for crimes of brutality he committed as a soldier for an unnamed warring faction that kidnapped him as child, Ezra (played with measured intensity by Mamoudu Turay Kamara) is persistently direct. His world, however, never coalesces with such specificity. Alternating between Ezra's militant upbringing and the trial where he must confront it, the movie refuses to establish a real location or political backdrop. Although it's clearly set in South Africa, Ezra's sweeping declarations could refer to anywhere. Vaguely situated in the Twilight Zone of national unrest, the main trapping of Ezra is imprecision.

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