I think that films should have an advisory level for how much attention is required to enjoy and understand the film. Essential Killing requires complete attention, which I did not give it, and by the time it succeeded in fully getting my attention, the movie was basically over. Oops. I take full responsibility that I may have failed the movie, and that the movie didn’t fail me. Essential Killing is a somewhat more realistic, explicitly fictional, very little dialogue and artsy fartsier The Way Back with fewer protagonists and set in today’s world. Violence isn’t glorified, and we are meant to sympathize with our enemy by empathizing with his universal needs: to stay warm, fed, receive mercy and be at peace; however Essential Killing unintentionally became the anti-Rambo as the enemy is unwittingly let loose in our ally’s backyard and (understandably) wreaks havoc to survive. If it wasn’t for the implied setting in a specific conflict (the Afghanistan war started in 2001), with a few tweaks, it would have made a great horror film, but since that was not the director’s intention, I think that ultimately Essential Killing failed. At times, Essential Killing even evoked The Grey. Albeit awkwardly, the protagonist survives too long and and too effectively deals with each obstacle in an inhospitable, foreign landscape. Essential Killing may be perfect visually, but it is too rooted in a specific time and place to truly transcend genres or politics to be about the essence of human nature’s desire to survive.