Largely comprising the edited video diaries of Matthew VanDyke, a wannabe adventurer from Baltimore who wound up joining the rebels in Libya’s anti-Gaddafi uprising, Marshall Curry’s sporadically engaging documentary provides a bizarre companion piece to American Sniper: an account of an OCD American misfit whose desire to take up arms in a foreign land seems more driven by his self-proclaimed “crash course in manhood” than geopolitical conviction. There’s a touch of the Timothy Treadwells about VanDyke, who oozes a narcissistic desire to star in the action-adventure movie of his own life. Despite spending nearly six months in a Tripoli jail and engaging in active combat, he still seems to be play-acting, a quality of which he is weirdly aware.
