'Battle for Haditha' Stars Vets, Iraqi Refugees

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SCOTT SIMON, host:

On November 19, 2005, U.S. Marines shot and killed 24 Iraqi civilians in the farming town of Haditha. Among them were several children and an old man in a wheelchair, all shot at close range.

Earlier that day, Marine Lance Corporal Miguel Terrazas had been killed by a roadside bomb in Haditha. He was well-liked by his men. Many in his unit were angry and scared.

The killings in Haditha might have been overlooked in all the accumulating deaths in Iraq, but an Iraqi journalism student videotaped interviews with survivors and witnesses the next day. His material was sent to Time magazine, which reported on the massacre, and that reporting led to an official investigation and military trials for two enlisted men and two officers.

Now Haditha is the subject of a new film, "Battle for Haditha."

(Soundbite of movie, "Battle for Haditha")

Unidentified Man #1 (Actor): (As character) (Chanting) I love hand-to-hand.

Unidentified Men (Actors): (As characters) (Chanting) I love hand-to-hand.

Unidentified Man #1: (Unintelligible).

SIMON: Written and directed by Nick Broomfield. Now the film's a drama, not a documentary. Iraqi refugees living in Jordan portray the civilians and insurgents in Haditha, and the Marines are played by former soldiers, including Elliot Ruiz, who served with the First Marine Division in Iraq in 2003.

Elliot Ruiz joins us now from the studios of NPR West. Mr. Ruiz, thanks so much for being with us.

Mr. ELLIOT RUIZ (Actor, "Battle for Haditha"; Former Marine): Thank you.

SIMON: And writer and director Nick Broomfield is in our studios in London. Mr. Broomfield, thank you very much for being with us.

Mr. NICK BROOMFIELD (Writer and Director, "Battle for Haditha"): Thank you.

SIMON: And Mr. Broomfield, let me turn to you first. So many Iraq War films - I guess I don't have to you I suspect - have been tanking. Why did you want to make this one?

Mr. BROOMFIELD: I wanted to make a film about war that actually understood a particular event from all the different sides and points of view. I wanted to understand what had been going through the minds of the Marines, what kind of situation they were in, what sort of mindset they were in, as well as the Iraqis living there and the insurgents who had placed the bomb.

And I did a lot of research. I met with Marines from Kilo Company who were there on that day, I met with survivors from the massacre, I met with members of the insurgency and pieced together something which I feel brings a certain understanding and humanity back to the situation.

You know, one of the incredible things is that despite all the feature films that have come out from Hollywood, none of them have really had any Iraqi characters in them.

SIMON: Mr. Ruiz, how'd you become part of this project? Maybe we should begin with you telling us a little bit about your Marine career.

Mr. RUIZ: I joined the United States Marine Corps at the age of 17 in 2002. I went through three months of boot camp, three months of infantry school, and right away I was shipped off to Iraq. I served (unintelligible) to cross into Iraq, and I was also part of the POW rescue, April 15 I believe of 2003.

SIMON: This is of Shoshana Johnson, among others.

Mr. RUIZ: Yes, sir, and I was wounded that day, and a couple surgeries later, they discharged me, and I got into acting.

SIMON: It was more than a couple, wasn't it, like a dozen surgeries or something?

Mr. RUIZ: Yeah, it actually has been 14.

SIMON: And what happened?

Mr. RUIZ: Basically, I had an Iraqi run my checkpoint, and I was being drugged by the back of a car with (unintelligible) wire wrapped around my leg and almost lost my leg.

SIMON: Mr. Broomfield, tell us about the decision you made to cast former soldiers as soldiers, and for that matter people who are Iraqi refugees as Iraqis now living in Jordan.

Mr. BROOMFIELD: I felt that those two groups could portray most accurately the emotions of what it was like to be in Iraq. All the main actors were, in fact, ex-Marines that all served time in Iraq, and I felt that they would make sure that they were fairly depicted and that they would bring a certain accuracy to the representation. So I was often quite guided by the way in which they said they would be doing things.

(Soundbite of movie, "Battle for Haditha")

Unidentified Man #2 (Actor): (As character) Everyone in there, man, woman, child, they all go. You understand that?

Unidentified Men (Actors): (As characters) Hoorah.

Unidentified Man #2: Women will strap a (bleep) bomb on them if they lost a son or a husband. You go in this house, anybody has a weapon, anyone's hiding behind someone with a weapon, they all go. You understand that?

Unidentified Men (Actors): (As characters) Hoorah.

SIMON: Mr. Broomfield, tell us what you were trying to open up for the audience in a scene like that.

Mr. BROOMFIELD: Well, I think one of the things we tend to overlook is the rules of engagement, and the rules of engagement are extremely vague, such as, you know, anyone in a hostile environment can be taken out. Now, the Marines of Kilo Company, in actual fact, had been engaged in Fallujah, which was probably the worst street-fighting in Iraq, and their rules of engagement were basically, you know, shoot at anyone you think is suspicious.

Their next assignment was Haditha, so it was operating within these kinds of rules of engagement that I think obviously came from the military command.

SIMON: And people would rather be court-martialed than buried?

Mr. BROOMFIELD: Well exactly. I think when you go to war, everyone is thinking about trying to live to the next day and surviving, and what we tried to do in the film is not to judge the Marines, not to judge the insurgents but to understand what this situation creates in people.

(Soundbite of movie, "Battle for Haditha")

Unidentified Man #3 (Actor): (As character) Everyone out.

(Soundbite of gunfire)

Unidentified Man #4 (Actor): (As Character) Tell the men to go over there. Ali, eh, eh…

Ask them is there any insurgency here or anything. Is he an insurgent?

Unidentified Man #5 (Actor): (As Character) (Speaking in foreign language)

Unidentified Man #6 (Actor): (As Character) (Speaking in foreign language)

Unidentified Man #5: (As Character) (Speaking in foreign language) He got some pictures.

Unidentified Man #4: (As Character) Hey, tell him to get up and go get 'em.

Unidentified Man #5: (As Character) (Speaking in foreign language)

Unidentified Man #4: (As Character) Ask him who did this to him.

Unidentified Man #5: (As Character) (Speaking in foreign language)

Unidentified Man #6: (As Character) (Speaking in foreign language)

Unidentified Man #5: (As Character) He says the (unintelligible) insurgents. I don't know who they belong to, but…

SIMON: And tell me about the Iraqi civilians. You wanted them to be part of this creative process, too, and share some of what they were feeling.

Mr. BROOMFIELD: In the massacre, it was a big family of 12 who were largely killed, and we managed to find a family of 12. They were all refugees from Iraq that had lost a couple of children, and a husband was killed there. So they had a lot of the emotions of many Iraqis who'd been through a severe trauma and conflict.

At the same time, they had an understanding of the bigger picture, which I think comes across in their performances. And again, obviously we had translators and so on, but I was very much guided by what they told me about Iraqi culture and the way that they lived in Iraq.

SIMON: Mr. Ruiz, what was it like for you to be in a country neighboring Iraq and working with so many Iraqis?

Mr. RUIZ: It was a wonderful experience. I left Iraq with a bad feeling towards Arab people, and going to Jordan just totally changed all of that. I was actually living with the Iraqis, and it wasn't just one Iraqi group. We had Iraqis that were actually family with the Saddam family, like the kid brought in pictures of his family with the Saddam family.

But then we had these poor Iraqis, also, that we made friends with. So you know, it was both sides, and they explained their feelings on the war and certain things, and we gave our feelings on certain things, and I think it was just wonderful that we could just come together like that after everything that we've been through.

SIMON: Did you always agree when you offered your views?

Mr. RUIZ: No we didn't. They knew what we did. You know, we had some guys that fought in Fallujah. There were actually some Iraqis on-set that were part of that fight in Fallujah that, you know, in their eyes, like, they were freedom fighters.

Mr. BROOMFIELD: It was pretty heavy the first day, though, when one of the actors who had lost three brothers in Fallujah, when he discovered that some of the Marines had been in Fallujah, there were some very hard words exchanged. And then sort of people talked and became, you know, incredibly close, actually, and when I went back to Jordan to show the film, I was amazed how many of the Iraqis were asking about Marines and where they were and how they were getting on and that sort of thing.

SIMON: I want to thank you both very much. Nick Broomfield, in London, is the writer and director of the new film, "Battle for Haditha." Thanks very much, Mr. Broomfield.

Mr. BROOMFIELD: Thank you. It was a pleasure.

SIMON: The film opens at the Film Forum in New York City next week and then at select theaters around the country. And Elliot Ruiz, former Marine who served in Iraq and stars in the "Battle for Haditha" at NPR West.

Thank you so much, Mr. Ruiz.

Mr. RUIZ: Thank you.

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