Shot in Morocco with hand-held cameras, the movie has the urgency of a heart attack. Clearly tilted against the war, and heavy on explanatory dialogue, it paints a bleak picture of a desperate country that is being exploited by extremists at the expense of the despairing citizens. The situation is dire.

While not easy to watch, and at times even harder to follow, Haas' film is an important attempt to accurately capture the confusing reality of contemporary Iraq.

Compelling and deeply disturbing.

The Situation is written by Wendell Steavenson, a reporter who served in Iraq, as a work of fiction. Its best quality is that the situation in Iraq appears to be sadly realistic.

The Situation, Philip Haas's deftly paced, well-written, and brilliantly infuriating Iraq War thriller is not only the strongest of recent geopolitical hotspot flicks but one that has been designed for maximal agitation.

The Situation deserves credit for not trying to reduce the events in Iraq to facile equations. There is corruption and cynicism on all sides: the U.S. diplomats and military, the Sunni leaders, the thugs in cop uniforms, the local powerbrokers.

An overstuffed, unengaging drama that makes time for a love triangle.

An uneven but impressively ambitious picture.

Overall the concept is strong and expertly fleshed out; it's just a pity that Hollywood tropes are allowed to invade.

Undeniably topical but the lack of emotional investment in its characters renders it more intelligent than engaging.

Dividing its loyalties between documentary and fictional narrative, it lacks the advantages of belonging to either side.

As ambitious in scope as it is interpretively timid, The Situation delivers the requisite incendiary climax, but collapses in on itself with daft speeches about the elusiveness of truth in something called "the fourth dimension of time."

Though Philip Haas's digitally shot film has the firsthand immediacy of such nonfictional docs as "Iraq in Fragments" and "Gunner Palace," its dramatic template feels disappointingly secondhand.

The romance makes an awkward, contrived fit with the nominally serious political stuff, and even those momentous events come off as generic and unconvincing.