Review: ‘Camp X-Ray’

One thing director Peter Sattler gets right in the new film “Camp X-Ray” is the way life can entrap even without prison walls. Pvt. Cole, a young soldier played by Kristen Stewart, joins the Army to escape small-town Florida and ends up guarding Ali, a Guantanamo Bay prisoner played by “A Separation” star Payman Maadi.

It helps if you think of “Camp X-Ray” and the prison face-off between Stewart’s and Maadi’s characters as a cautionary conversation unfolding more like a theater production than a movie. In their tete-a-tetes, provocative moments emerge as writer-director Sattler zeros in on the unlikely and uneasy friendship that develops between Cole and Ali. Otherwise, the drama has a tendency to slip into stereotypes a bit too easily, among them military misogyny, terrorist ideology and xenophobia. It’s not that those elements don’t exist in the real world, especially in places such as Gitmo where being detained as a terrorist suspect can feel like a life sentence without the trial. But “Camp X-Ray” boils too much down to black and white.

Ali is shown briefly in his pre-prison days, somewhere in the Middle East readying a bunch of cellphones for something, when he’s caught in a sweep. Black bag over his head, in chains, he’s flown to Guantanamo. He’s not the leader of his cellblock; he spends his time reading, praying and resisting where he can.

Cole joins the high-security detail as part of the regular rotation of new blood. Her first real encounter with Ali is over books; she’s delivering them, he’s complaining about a conspiracy to keep Harry Potter’s last from him. She thinks “The Prisoner of Azkaban” is an Arabic book.

With that kind of cultural counterpoint established, Sattler starts escalating the hostilities between Ali and Cole. There is what should be a deal breaker involving watered-down filth in the face. But watching the punishment that follows, something shifts inside Cole. The film finds its footing as their fragmented conversations expand. By laying out the arguments in bits and pieces, Sattler keeps the dialogue from overstating the case.

If only the other characters were drawn with as much restraint. Instead we have a sea of mostly anonymous, screaming faces in the detainees and, on the other side, jacked-up alpha males in uniform. Sgt. Ransdell (Lane Garrison), Cole’s supervisor, is a particularly nasty piece of work.

A locked-down soldier is a good fit for Stewart’s interior acting style. The skittish looks the actress slips between hard glares or icy outrage bring a kind of understated electricity to Cole. And the impact that comes when she softens, even slightly, is first-rate as she continues to evolve the further away she gets from “Twilight.” There is an edginess that flows through all of her work.

Maadi is always an intriguing and enigmatic presence. There’s a latent scowl that gives his look a kind of mystery and possible menace even when there is nothing else to indicate it. But it is the way he uses the eyes that is so potent. Intelligence, outrage, kindness, bemusement, he delivers it all with a glance. If you haven’t seen his performance in “A Separation,” which won the foreign language Oscar in 2012, put it on your DVD to-do list.

As to Sattler, though he stumbles in this first outing, at times mightily — the ending is too ludicrous for words — he makes room for Stewart and Maadi to build a different narrative than we’re used to in the war on terror. One that allows a little understanding to creep in.

“Camp X-Ray” - 2 1/2 stars

MPAA rating: R (for language and brief nude images)

Running time: 1:58

Opens: Friday

bsharkey@tribune.com