TIFF Review: Atonement Is an Ambitious But Misguided War on Terror Story

Dexter Filkins’ 2012 New Yorker article “Atonement After Iraq” tells the incredible story of the Kachadoorian family, whose lives were ripped apart during the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, and Lu Lobello, one of the soldiers responsible for their loss. During a firefight at an intersection in Baghdad, the Kachadoorians drove through to get back to their home around the corner. Lobello and his platoon mistook them for insurgents and opened fire, killing three family members. Years later, a guilt-ridden Lobello contacted Filkins—who reported on the incident for the New York Times—with one request: help broker a meeting between him and some of the surviving family members, who relocated to America, in the hopes of easing his pain.

It’s the kind of sensational tale that would naturally attract interest in a film adaptation, and Reed Van Dyk ambitiously takes it on for his feature-directing debut Atonement. And while his efforts to tackle such a complex story start out strong, with a harrowing opening act that provides a refreshing alternative to traditional and problematic portrayals of the Iraq War, Van Dyk unfortunately never quite threads the needle in his look at the aftermath and attempted reconciliation. Retreating to a broad, anti-war message and relying too much on restraint in its direction, Atonement inspires respect for its sincerity and frustration for not exploring the many complicated questions its premise brings about.

“The bullet moves both ways,” says a character at one point, and the perspective shift that line brings to matters of war reflects in how Van Dyk structures his film around shifting perspectives. Atonement begins with the Khatchaturian family (the film alters the names of its real-life counterparts) hiding out at a relatives’ home in Baghdad in 2003, and Van Dyk films it like a naturalistic drama that, in the context of a Middle Eastern family within an American narrative, feels revelatory. Relatives watch TV, bicker with each other, and go about their daily lives in a neighborhood that looks like an actual community as opposed to pending targets for destruction. After decades of media portraying the Middle East through the lens of American occupation, Van Dyk provides a sense of people whose lives exist outside of that lens, a fact that’s worth celebrating on its own and rings depressing in a larger context.

The Khatchaturians’ lives get upended when a nearby explosion sets off the chain of events that leads the family to the intersection and in the crosshairs of Lou (Boyd Holbrook), who swiftly takes out the husband and two sons of Mariam (Hiam Abbass), as well as injuring her daughter Nora (Gheed). Van Dyk and cinematographer Jon Peters introduce Lou’s character via chaotic and impressive combat scenes that drop us in the heightened, paranoid perspectives of him and his fellow soldiers that led them to shoot the family’s approaching vehicles. All of it creates a stomach-churning tension until the incident itself, and in the immediate aftermath, the film brings in journalist Michael (Kenneth Branagh) to follow his reporting.

Atonement then jumps over a decade in time and splits its narrative into three chapters, each solely focused on one character. We first see Lou, now a law student in San Diego, suffering from PTSD and drug addiction that got him dishonorably discharged. When one of his former platoon members shares Michael’s article before committing suicide, Lou reaches out to Michael and the film switches over to his efforts to locate the surviving Khatchaturians before the final chapter focuses on Mariam, who now lives in California with Nora.

Van Dyk’s deliberately fractured narrative intends to use Mariam’s section to put the pieces back together once everyone finds themselves in the same room, but there are too many gaps to make it cohere. As conscientious as the film is in identifying both sides as victims of greater geopolitical forces they’re forced to bear the burden of, a focus on Lou never quite gets around the uncomfortable feeling of a shoot-and-cry narrative, especially when the film chooses to hold Mariam’s POV back for extra dramatic effect. The machinations are obvious and a touch too delicate for such a thorny topic—an inherent flaw of placing this subject within the confines of a feature-length narrative. And while the questions around whether there is any world where these people can find peace between each other are there, Atonement is too content with being little more than a prompt for them.

It’s a choice that holds the film from digging in deeper on how people find some form of peace after living through the horrors of war. Yet for a depiction of something so charged, there are worse pitfalls than not doing enough. Like his Oscar-nominated short DeKalb Elementary, Atonement presents Van Dyk as a promising new filmmaker capable of thoughtful approaches to sensitive subjects. But something as messy and irreconcilable as what these characters face seems underserved by the deliberateness of that thoughtful attitude.

Atonement screened at the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival and will open on October 2 from Kino Lorber.