Jamie Roberts’ terse, painfully precise documentary “Escape from Kabul” zooms right in on one episode—the massive last-minute airlift of Afghans and remaining American personnel from Kabul in August 2021—and never looks away, even when you might wish that it did. It’s a close-quarters kind of war film that moves in tight and leaves little room to breathe. This seems an appropriate stylistic decision for a movie that is mainly about tens of thousands of people trying to escape a country as it is being reclaimed by medieval fanatics whose promises of equitable treatment were not widely believed.
Rather than compress America’s two-decade-long Afghanistan War into a scene-setting montage, Roberts sets the scene starkly. On-screen titles and a few audio clips describe President Donald Trump’s 2020 agreement to withdraw troops from Afghanistan and the arrival in Kabul of two companies of Marines not long before the August 31, 2021, deadline set by President Joe Biden. The establishing scenes are quick and the mood ominous even before the triggering event that blasts a planned retreat into a free-for-all: the Taliban occupying Kabul on August 15, weeks or even months earlier than the Americans believed. Once the Western-backed government evaporated, a sizable percentage of Kabul residents decided their best bet for survival was to get on one of the cargo planes taking off from the airport.  
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From that point on, “Escape from Kabul” becomes a breathless account of a strange end to a war America seemed to have forgotten it was fighting. As the clock ticked down to the end of the negotiated truce between the Americans and Taliban, thousands of terrified civilians, a tiny and unprepared band of soldiers, and a limited number of planes converged at the airport, a sprawling complex that a hundred fifty Marines had no hope of controlling. Even after American reinforcements arrived, secured the airfield, and started slowly processing Afghans who had the right paperwork to leave their country, a crowded mass of desperate humanity remained outside the gates for days on end in stifling heat; whip-wielding Taliban terror behind them, American bureaucracy and riot guns in front.
The drama is gripping, somewhat resembling Rory Kennedy’s memorable “Last Days in Vietnam” but with a more targeted and reportorial remit that omits nearly anything happening outside the airport. Roberts’ need for a disciplined cadence is understandable. It amplifies the tension in an attempt to replicate those feverish days. Also, focusing on the airport keeps the film from following any of the myriad sub-narratives about what led up to the frenzied panic of a withdrawal. Left unsaid is any of the political machinations that led to the shaky truce, which mostly kept the Taliban from firing on Americans as the evacuation took place. Though several Marines remember the dissonance of discovering they had to collaborate with their enemy to maintain security, the discussion goes no further. The film’s perspective in those moments of moral and political confusion—describing with little comment how Afghan troops cleared the runways by gunning down and running over civilians—has a detachment which, while understandable for a journalistic-style film, can be rattling at times. (Matthew Heineman’s documentary “Retrograde” covers a similar stretch of time as this film but pays more attention to the humanity of the people involved.)
Roberts cuts from shaky on-the-ground footage shot at Hamid Karzai International Airport—its very name an unspoken dark irony that hangs over the film—to reflective interviews with the people who were there. The Marines essentially provide the dramatic spine, especially Lt. Col. Chris Richardella, whose taut narration of the day-by-day action brings a degree of clarity to the chaos. To Roberts’ credit, he does not fall into the trap of many Western filmmakers who focus their Afghanistan War stories primarily on the American combatants. Instead, Roberts lets numerous Afghans, both civilians and (in a move some could view as controversial) Taliban, describe the mix of confusion, terror, and jubilation taking place on the other side of the barbed wire.
For the civilians appearing in the film, living under Taliban rule was non-negotiable. This is particularly true for the women, like the government minister who says with wearied resignation that she had to leave simply because “you cannot live” otherwise. Given their faster-than-expected victory, the Taliban interviewees are cheerful and sanguine, not to mention sometimes young enough to have been children when the war began. One, who says he joined the Taliban after the Americans killed two of his family, appears particularly satisfied at the victory. Another explains in a chillingly understated manner that Afghan civilians needed to be stopped from leaving so that they would not “adopt the American way of life.” Despite that warning, over 120,000 Afghans managed to be airlifted out of the country before the Americans left, smashing their equipment on their way out of the country.
The speed and economy Roberts brings to “Escape from Kabul” helps communicate the jarring nature of a historical hinge moment when everything seems to be up for grabs. There will be more expansive and descriptive stories about this episode, but few more powerful. [B+]