Rating: NR | Runtime: 115 minutes
Release Date: October 2nd, 2026 (USA)
Studio: Kino Lorber
Director(s): Reed Van Dyk
Writer(s): Reed Van Dyk / Dexter Filkins (New Yorker article “Atonement After Iraq”)

There is a tragic case that sticks in my mind.

My Undesirable Friends: Part II – Exile kept coming to mind while watching Reed Van Dyk’s Atonement. A scene in the former shows the Russian ex-pats reckoning with the complexity of whether they can label young Russian troops forced to kill Ukrainians by Putin’s regime as victims too. Yes, it’s true that some soldiers have gone against their will and might not even know what they’re fighting for, but is now the time to voluntarily sympathize with the enemy?

It’s not an easy question to answer since you could argue that time will never arrive—fair or not. So, while I can objectively empathize with a character such as Lou D’Alessandro (played by Boyd Holbrook and based upon ex-Marine Lu Lobello) considering what the military industrial complex does to its enlistees and how it subsequently forgets about them when they return home broken, I can’t subjectively see his story as anything but self-serving.

I must therefore commend Van Dyk and company for appreciating that reality and never shying from it. The script goes so far as to get us to not really like the journalist (Kenneth Branagh’s Michael Reid, based on Dexter Filkins) who’s been following the central story of an innocent family being shot at by American troops in Iraq since 2003. He’s so oblivious that he’s genuinely shocked to hear how his helping Lou might increase the real victims’ suffering.

And there I go using a word like “real” as if Lou isn’t in pain. Or course he is. But there’s a difference between the pain of the man who ignorantly killed three men (just because he didn’t know the identity of his target doesn’t mean it was accidental) and the pain of the surviving family members who watched them die. Mariam (Hiam Abbass) and Nora Khachaturian (Gheed) shouldn’t be forced to carry the emotional burden of the man who destroyed their lives.

So, while Atonement is an extremely affecting film that does well to consider the messiness of the situation and platform fantastic performances (Holbrook and Abbass shine), it’s difficult not to wonder if a feature film wasn’t the best route to present it as anything but a reductive “both sides” argument. This is especially true since its assumption that our empathy for the Khachaturians is implicit leads them to focus more on Lou to (perhaps artificially) even the scales.

It’s not even, though. We shouldn’t disregard Lou’s anguish (PTSD is real and our country doesn’t come close to doing enough to help those struggling with it), but we also shouldn’t diminish or exploit the Khachaturians’ plight to prove as much. Thankfully, things eventually play out in a way that renders the whole film as more of a commentary on war itself and how we’ve sadly normalized it to the point where futility often outweighs accountability.

---

Hiam Abbass in ATONEMENT; courtesy of Kino Lorber.