DVD Review: Osama

Osama does a great job of invoking sympathy and emotion as it shows the severe type of violence and evil events that take in the Afghanistan. It is an excellent movie about a young girl posing as a boy to earn money for her family, and the movie is one of the best foreign films I have ever seen.

The young girl is given the name "Osama" when she cuts her hair short like a boy's, and she sets out to find work. The Taliban are always prowling the streets, and she knows that if they catch her, they will kill her. Luckily, she finds a job with a kind man who sells milk. He helps to hide her and pays her. She is living in constant fear, and the man, although he is kind, can't seem to comfort her. Instead of becoming used to her new life, I see that while she is trying to act mature, her child instincts are taking over and she acts and feels like a small child lost in a foreign world.

The girl does have a family that I can tell loves her (especially her grandma), but it makes me wonder why her mother and grandmother would risk her life just for money and food. There had to be another way to do this, but, one again, I am unaware of the circumstances in those countries, so maybe this is the only alternative.

Anyway, after working for the milkman for a while, she is whisked away by the unknowing Taliban to be trained for war (they are gathering all of the local boys to go to war). She is nervous that she will be found out, and eventually she is.Her fate is sure death, but a man agrees to marry her, and her life is lost and saved at the same time. When she arrives at this man's house, she meets his dozens of other wives who say that their life was ruined by coming there. This is not a happy conclusion to the movie, and I see the girl's life deteriorate right before my eyes.

Osama is a brilliant exercise in emotional drama, with a great storyline and superb acting. It seems like this is more of a documentary than a film because of the acting. It feels like you are watching real events happen to real people. This is a must-see film that is very emotional and realistic.