Caboose

No Man’s Land was the other film I rented from Heffers yesterday.

It’s set during the war in Bosnia, starting with a group of Bosnian soldiers trying to find their way to their lines at night in thick fog. When morning comes they find themselves between the lines and are quickly massacred, apart from one soldier who is blown into an abandoned trench in the middle of no man’s land.

Two Serb soldiers are sent to investigate the trench, one is killed shortly after placing a mine under the body of another of the Bosnians and the other is held captive. During the course of the film the two enemies keep trying to get posession of the weapons but they know they have to wait until nightfall to escape.

Things get worse when the Bosnian lying on the mine turns out to be alive after all. The two others have succeeded in attracting the attention of their forces, who call in the UN. The vaguely farcical actions of the UN lead to a French sergeant ignoring orders and trying to help.

The film shows well the bitter enmity between the two sides, the hopeless position of the UN troops and the shallowness of the media, although the English reporter played by Katrin Cartlidge is a very sympathetic character.