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DESERT ONE Film Review — A Documentary That Could Push Some Buttons
Shimmying like a kinetically charged Hollywood action-adventure film, Director Barbara Kopple’s DESERT ONE can make audiences feel as if they are flies on the wall, eyewitnesses to history through the marvel of a space-time-continuum created for them by a filmmaker in pursuit of truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Five big stars for a suspenseful, gripping and researched solid account of the iconic 444 days of that crisis — though pre-publicity purports for reasons unknown that the movie thematically focuses on the Delta Force military mission which failed abjectly and ignominiously in an Iranian desert. The cinematic vista of that event created holistically by two-time Oscar winning Kopple is much broader than focus on the special forces military mission.
And to be clear, in no way does DESERT ONE question the valor and bravery of the Delta Force special forces who flew into that Iranian desert on a mission impossible.
Eight were fried when a helicopter, taking off after the mission was aborted, struck a nearby C 130 troop ship. The hubris, ignorance and political expediency revealed about the decision to send them there by the White House and other high mucky-mucks are pronounced.
