Camp X-Ray

The depiction of Guantánamo Bay as a banal, ugly hole of a place waiting to be condemned makes for a compelling first half hour in this military drama. Then freshman writer-director Peter Sattler’s naive morality play kicks in—a rookie Gitmo guard (Kristen Stewart)—befriends a detainee (A Separation‘s Payman Maadi)—and the movie becomes a series of histrionic attempts to be, as Stewart’s character says with a pout, ”Just not as black and white as they said it was gonna be.” For real. C+

• 

  By Joe McGovern @jmcgvrn