A Private War is a biopic of the celebrated Sunday Times war correspondent Marie Colvin who was, judging from this, brave, humane and utterly fearless as well as a drunk, lonely, traumatised and annoying. A complicated human being, in other words. And why did she do it? Why did she risk her life to get the truth out there? No easy answers are offered, thankfully. It may just be that she had to face death to feel properly alive. I can only say, with confidence, that the film features a magnificently fierce, alert and impassioned performance from Rosamund Pike, whose usual English rose delicacy is nowhere to be seen. It is top work, properly.
Directed by Matthew Heineman, who is otherwise a documentary maker (Cartel Land, City of Ghosts), the film opens with an aerial view of a devastated Homs (Syria), the place that would prove to be her Waterloo. (Colvin was killed there in 2012, having been directly targeted by the Assad regime.)
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