Island Soldier (2017)
There's a particular kind of documentary that doesn't try to dazzle you, doesn't reach for a grand rhetorical flourish, and doesn't resolve into a satisfying conclusion. Island Soldier is that kind of film, and I mean that as both a compliment and a gentle criticism. It sits with you not because of how it's made, but because of what it shows you, and what it shows you is genuinely hard to shake.
The subject is one most people outside the Pacific region will know almost nothing about. Micronesia, through a Compact of Free Association with the United States, allows its citizens to enlist in the US military, and the film makes clear that this arrangement is exploited heavily. The US arrives with the promise of a wage, a future, a way out of poverty, and young Micronesian men sign up, often idealistic, often barely adults. What they get in return is deployment into conflicts that have nothing to do with them or their islands, followed by an institutional abandonment that is staggering in its indifference. The families left behind, grieving or waiting or both, are the film's true subject. And director Nathan Fitch lets them speak.
The structure, or the near-absence of one, will frustrate some viewers. There's very little narration, minimal contextual framing, and nothing approaching the rhetorical architecture you'd find in a big-platform exposé. It moves through vignettes: a grieving mother, a young man weighing his options, a quiet family meal shadowed by absence. If you come to it expecting the pace and polish of something built for a streaming audience, you'll find it rough going. It genuinely does feel unfinished in places, and I won't pretend otherwise.
But here's the thing. That roughness earns the film something that more polished documentaries frequently sacrifice. By not over-producing or over-explaining, Fitch gives his subjects room to exist as full human beings rather than props in an argument. The grief in this film is not curated. The confusion these families feel, caught between pride in their sons and anger at the system that took them, is not tidied up for the camera. It lands with a weight that a slicker edit would actually undermine. The lack of a clean narrative arc starts to feel like the point: there is no clean arc, because this situation has no resolution, no final act, no moment where the injustice is acknowledged and corrected.
For anyone with even a passing awareness of how US foreign policy operates across the Pacific, the broad strokes here won't be a revelation. But knowing something intellectually and watching a mother describe her son's death with quiet, exhausted dignity are very different experiences. That gap, between understanding and feeling, is where Island Soldier does its best work. It reminded me of Papa Mau: The Wayfinder, another documentary rooted in Pacific identity that earns its emotional weight through intimacy rather than spectacle, and similarly it asks you to meet the community on its own terms rather than through an outside narrator's framing.
Is it the most accomplished documentary you'll see this year? Not a chance. Does it handle every element of its subject with equal care or depth? No. But I'd argue that bearing honest witness to something overlooked is its own form of value, and Micronesian voices in global conversations about US militarism are so rarely centred that the film's existence alone feels meaningful.
Three stars.
Watch it for the humanity, not the craft. Come to it willing to sit with discomfort and loose ends, and it'll give you something worth carrying around for a while. That's not nothing. In fact, for a story this important and this ignored, it's quite a lot.
Rating: ★★★ | Year: 2017 | Watched: 2026-06-02
Where to watch
Watch in the US
Physical: Amazon US
Affiliate disclosure: Movies With Macca may earn a small commission on purchases or subscriptions started via these links. It costs you nothing extra.
