Point and Shoot

What's it mean to be a man? That's something every male throughout history has asked himself one time or another. It's a rite of passage. The search that has sent many a man down roads they wished they had never ventured.

For Matthew VanDyke that question lead him to a rebellion thousands of miles away from his home, a five and a half month prison stint and the lose of many friends who he fought along side. And still the answer to that age old question remained elusive.

"Point and Shoot" is a very unique piece of cinema. Many times we're shown documentaries that reenact pivotal moments in a person's history. Here, director Marshall Curry let's the video footage VanDyke shot during his "adventures" with the Libyan Rebel Army talk for itself.

The Baltimore-native VanDyke grew up in a divorced home, but never felt the pressures of life itself. He describes his life as being a sheltered one, giving insight into his life such as his mom doing his laundry and buying him groceries after he graduated from Georgetown University.

However, he speaks of longing for a bigger life, like the ones he saw in the movies and TV shows that helped shape his childhood and adolescence. Inspired by Australian filmmaker Alby Mangels who's travel/safari films depicted the type of living on the edge life he wanted to lead, VanDyke makes plans to make his own adventure film.

VanDyke is like very man except one thing -- he suffers from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. His disorder is shown early in the documentary when he excuses himself to wash his hands mid-sentence.

Setting out on his "crash course in manhood", VanDyke travels across northern Africa, winding his way all the way through the Middle East. Trying to recreate Mangels' bravado filmmaking style, VanDyke sets out alone on motorcycle and an adventure that sees him attacked by mobs, staying in filthy hotels and buying weapons to help keep himself safe.

After breaking his collarbone during a wreck on his motorcycle, VanDyke's OCD hits hyperdrive and he confesses to his girlfriend he can't leave his hotel room. She challenged him with "why are you such a coward?" which set in motion a series of events that would take the well educated, shelter American and thrust him into the middle of the war to overthrow Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

He joins up with a friend he met during his travels and begins fighting with a rag-tag group of rebel fighters who were outnumbered, out-armed and had nothing going for them except the passion to see Gaddafi out of power.

His team is ambushed, he is arrest, yet even after escaping prison following five and a half months, he still refuses to leave. But when he emerges, he finds the tide had shifted in those few months and Gaddafi's days were now numbered.

What is most striking about the images in the film is the amount of people holding cell phones video taping the events. There seem to be just as many, if not more cell phones being held as there are weapons. It was a war played out in a digital-enhanced world and VanDyke was one of the lead characters.

"Point and Shoot" is an intimate look at OCD and how it can affect a person in both positive and negative ways. VanDyke is like many men of his generation, but his disorder helped fuel an adventure that had him literally on the edge of life and death.

After everything he had been through, and the strides he had made since starting his journey, when asked if he was successful on his crash course in manhood, VanDyke simply shrugs and isn't able answer the question.

VanDyke seems to be a man still in search of who he is and struggling to find a suitable answer.

4 stars