When writing about the most impressive movies, it’s always tempting to to ascribe levels of nobility and import that may not actually be present. The impact of a movie is shaped by the feelings it stirs up, after all, and when a work is churning up emotions at the most potent, it can feel like its tapping into the universal and the unprecedented at the same time. The more intensely visceral the film is, the more likely it provokes reactions that can be hard to contain, or at least properly intellectualize. The documentary Restrepo, directed by Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger, takes that sort of fiercely concerted experience to a whole different strata, embedding with the Unites States military at one of the most dangerous fronts of the seemingly endless war in Afghanistan. They push in close to the action, closer than I ever recall seeing a camera get in a nonfiction film about war; spent shell casings are practically deflecting off the lens. Hetherington and Junger are determined to give the audiences the nearest possible equivalent experience to being in a firefight, driving through a war-torn region, wiling away the hours in a makeshift barracks and simply living every day as a soldier whose life is on the line in an unpredictable land where every bit of progress is met with twice the amount of setbacks. Even as the directors’ efforts deliver incredible moments and staggering scenes, the film is an open admission of the impossibility of capturing the futility, the boredom, the frustration, the terror, the loneliness, the adrenalized courage, the pride, the camaraderie, the patriotism and the turmoil of the time these servicemen spend on the battlefield. The film is resolutely apolitical, taking no stance on the wisdom or agenda of this particular conflict. Except to the degree that every war film is an anti-war film, Restrepo passes no judgment on the act of war itself. It simply acknowledges it, observes it and carries anyone who watches closer to the conflict than is reasonably comfortable. Of course, that discomfort is the goal and the film’s great accomplishment.