‘Atonement’ Review: Emotionally Powerful Anti-War Film Shows That Bullets Fire Both Ways

For his feature debut, American director Reed Van Dyk adapts Dexter Filkins’ New Yorker article, “Atonement After Iraq” published in 2012. This intimate and psychologically astute portrait of the human cost of U.S. imperial violence draws a precise focus from what cinema is built for: putting us in a character’s skin.

This is a war film less ordinary, for it is imbued with the emotional acuity of a life-changing therapist. Following the lead of Filkins’ source material (“I remember reading this piece because I cried all the way through it,” Van Dyk told the audience at a Directors’ Fortnight screening) “Atonement” is not interested in establishing a warzone by showing peripheral acts of violence. Indeed, the only shooting victims shown (in several devastating flashes) are the heart of the film’s insoluble sorrows.

This shooting in the Baladiyat district of Iraq likewise shapes the storytelling focus. Nothing is included that does not relate to its build-up, execution, or aftermath. Narrative is intertwined with character, so that every dramatic development reveals something about the people forever trapped in the crosshairs of April 8, 2003.

While emotional gravitas is a constant, special mention must go to the opening and closing sequences, which you have to remind yourself to breathe through. Bringing it home is a formidable performance from the great Palestinian actress Hiam Abbass; her presence cannot be separated from the history that lives on her face. Her still features hold the solemn authority of Marcia in “Succession” the only person to outboss Logan; while the pain-filled light in her eyes telegraphs the Palestinian yearning for home, an autobiographical detail she owns in “Bye Bye Tiberias” and “Palestine 36.” 

Here, she plays Mariam Khachaturian, a Christian-Armenian Iraqi woman who taught ninth grade before the war began. She has a full family: a husband, two sons, two daughters, and two grandchildren (one is a baby). Abbass presents Mariam as a self-possessed and godly woman, capable of internalizing suffering to communicate with clarity and grace. The outset of war finds her wary yet calm, and our knowledge of her composure under siege means that all following emotional displays shake us like miniature earthquakes.

The film opens that April morning in Baghdad. Three generations of Khachaturians are preparing a meal from fresh produce. It has been a few weeks since the U.S. troops invaded. Bombs are falling and the water and electricity keep cutting out, yet the bonds of family life remain intact. Mariam’s daughter Nora (Gheed) eats cherries and spits out the pits. Children chase a ball under a car on the road outside. The family watches TV news, with limited patience for Saddam Hussein’s goading of the U.S. as “The Great Invader.” They debate whether to return from this hide-out offered by Mariam’s sister to their own home nearby. 

The mood is loaded like a memory, possessing a tenderness that goes beyond the usual pre-disaster movie tension. This camera focuses on faces: the glancing looks, the unsaid worry, and the tableaux of co-existence. This is a close and loving family and its members speak to each other in shorthand. A blast turns the interior of the house white with smoke. Miraculously, no one has been hurt, however the decision about whether to leave has been made for them. They fill up a convoy of two cars, staying connected via phone. Cut to the other perspective that will prove crucial. 

Lou (Boyd Holbrook) is a U.S. Marine, part of a regiment of young servicemen who roll into town in an open-topped vehicle, building rapport by joking about fucking each other’s mums. Van Dyk shows their arrival from the perspective of the local residents, skillfully conveying the atmosphere particular to the early stages of an occupation. Residents are wary but not beaten down. Pride is measured against self-preservation. They look at the soldiers and then look away, moving with exaggerated slowness. One brave man ignores a greeting. “What the fuck was his problem?,” says a muscular marine armed with a machine gun and self-obliviousness.  

The setting (Jordan subbed in for Iraq) is presented with appreciative attention to its walls graffitied in Arabic and colourful fruit stores. The aesthetic and texture of this brand-new war zone is full of disturbing contrasts: here are spent gun shells and here are kids eating peaches. Lou’s unit is sent to a rooftop to start shooting at an invisible enemy; the Khachaturian cars hear the gunfire and don’t know what to do. A few confused moments later nothing will be the same again. The sadness saturating this set piece cannot be overstated. It’s the only time we hear Mariam scream.

All of this happens in the first third of the film. The second act focuses on Lou in Los Angeles a decade later. He is a haunted, traumatized shambles, prone to shaking during sex with his on-off partner Anna (Yara Bakri). It’s bold to ask an audience to care about a character responsible for the pain we have witnessed so far. A wrong turn into sentimentality, special pleading or — God forbid — American exceptionalism risks destroying our fragile trust in a filmmaker’s integrity.

The robust reporting underpinning these characters gives Van Dyk a roadmap. Rather than trying to sell us on Lou, he reveals the sorry biographical story and makes careful visual choices that suit this medium. Lou’s muscular body is always clad in unironed clothes. Even when he makes an effort to dress up, he looks like he hasn’t slept in days.

At a support group for veterans, Anna says that when a bullet is fired, it shoots both ways. She would know. Bakri gives a fine-tuned performance as a woman trying not to lose herself in the madness consuming her loved one. Little by little, “Atonement” challenges the straightforward notion of killers and victims, posing the implicit question: which unseen force is responsible for all this suffering?

Filkins has a fictional surrogate to serve as a channel between the Khachaturians and Lou. New Yorker journalist, Michael Reid (a low-key Kenneth Branagh), pops up during the tail of the Baghdad section to take down the stories of Mariam and Nora. One tormented night, Lou finds this story. His guilt now has a point of contact and these contacts are now living in California.

The Hollywood version of this story would build to a third act of grand melodramatic catharsis, whereas “Atonement” has quieter designs. Its title is too large for the place where it ends up. There is no attempt to dissolve grief into “and they all lived happily ever after,” instead the aim is to find grace notes between people united by the act that locked them into conflict.

Equally, Holbrook and Abbass are working from opposite poles of performance. The former can’t hold himself together and the latter does it majestically well. Amidst the silences and stilted conversation, their willingness to be in the same room flickers into existence a relationship other than their inescapable roles as killer and survivor. I was reminded of this line from Rumi: Somewhere beyond right and wrong, there is a garden, I will meet you there. 

Grade: A-

“Atonement” premiered at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.

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