A documentary by Tony Gerber and Jesse Moss. In English and Arabic with English subtitles. Unrated. Plays August 23 to 26 at the Vancity Theatre

The title Full Battle Rattle refers to the load an army grunt carries into war. These days, soldiers are asked to haul even more baggage to the front, if this intermittently engaging documentary is any indication.

The slickly assembled feature depicts a military station deep in the Mojave Desert, where the U.S. army has built a mock Iraqi village as a training site for troops about to be deployed. The Iraqis they encounter are real—immigrants who’ve come to America only to pretend they’re the people they left behind.

Codirectors Tony Gerber and Jesse Moss spent three weeks living with the civilians, officers, and soldiers—including the Iraq-war veterans who play insurgents—during a boot-camp experience intended to simulate the conditions young men and women from Hicksville will encounter in their first taste of foreign soil. What’s intended in this “giant reality–TV show”, as one officer describes it, is that foot soldiers get a visceral sense of what they’re in for overseas. Still, after witnessing a number of “injects”, or scripted scenarios, the viewer may start to wonder who’s really benefiting from these exercises.

The army was surprisingly cooperative regarding this previously secret venture, especially given the antiwar stance taken elsewhere by these New York–based filmmakers. Perhaps that’s because this vastly expensive theatre of war is one place where the Pentagon can claim success. Ultimately, this bloody pantomime (with its sketchy profiles of the participants) allows those nominally in control to convince themselves of sincere motivations behind a mission that was doomed on every level before it began. A postscript explains that the cardboard village seen here has since been converted into an Afghan-style one. No word as to whether the civilians have been traded in as well.