Rating: R | Runtime: 94 minutes
Release Date: November 11th, 2022 (USA)
Studio: National Geographic Documentary Films / Disney+
Director(s): Matthew Heineman

Our country is everything we have.

Without ignoring Matthew Heineman’s great earlier works, there’s a definite kinship between last year’s The First Wave and this year’s Retrograde as far as documentaries taking an objective, fly-on-the-wall approach to events in real-time. Just like he couldn’t have known what would transpire at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, heading to Afghanistan at the beginning of 2021 had as much potential for filming a flawless transition of military force as it did the unfortunate hostile takeover that ultimately transpired. The story wrote itself. Heineman’s team was merely brave enough to capture it.

That’s not to say the final result doesn’t find an agenda in the edit. You can’t watch what occurs between the time Biden announces a full-scale withdrawal of troops from the country after a twenty year presence and Kabul being overrun by Taliban without acknowledging the big picture theme of America’s undeniable fault. Two decades and trillions of dollars (let alone thousands of lives) and the US really just left Lt. General Sami Sadat and his army out to dry. You can’t justify any of it—not even killing Osama bin Laden—when you’re willing to simply let the angrier and more powerful enemy that you’ve emboldened (How devastating yet honest is it hearing a US soldier admit their violence helped recruit today’s Taliban?) to gain control.

It’s a tough watch as a result. A portrayal of hubris and mismanagement on behalf of the world’s so-called “protectors” and abject futility on behalf of those who rose to their feet to risk everything in pursuit of a promise left unfulfilled. From Green Berets breathlessly putting their hands in the air when ordered to destroy loose ammunition rather than give it to Sadat to the General’s own government abandoning him at his greatest time of need, we’re shown the reality that evil rarely ever has to fight for power. Too often it must only walk through an open door.

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Lt. General Sami Sadat in RETROGRADE (Matthew Heineman/OTP).