Sand Castle is a 2017 American war drama film directed by Fernando Coimbra and written by Chris Roessner. The film stars Nicholas Hoult, Logan Marshall-Green, Henry Cavill, Glen Powell, Tommy Flanagan, Beau Knapp, and Neil Brown Jr. The film centers on Matt Ocre, a young soldier in the United States Army, who is tasked with restoring water to a village in Iraq. It is inspired by Roessner's experience as a soldier in the Iraq War. It was released on April 21, 2017, on Netflix.
Contents
Plot
At the beginning of the 2003 Iraq War, Private Matt Ocre, a young civil affairs soldier with the Army Reserve slams his hand in the door of a Humvee in an attempt to get sent home. Narration reveals that he enlisted in July 2001, in order to get money for college. His identity and personal struggles, along with his repressed desires, contributing to the unraveling of the story. Some time later, he is seen with a cast on his arm, his attempt having been unsuccessful. His cast gets cut off just in time to be sent to Baghdad. During the battle, Ocre spots a sniper and Sergeant Dylan Chutsky calls in a helicopter strike that destroys the building the sniper is in.
The film then skips forward to some time after the battle, when Ocre's squad is tasked with repairing a broken water system in the dangerous village of Baqubah. They arrive in the village and meet up with a Special Forces unit led by Captain Syverson (whom Ocre sees as a father figure). Syverson introduces them to their interpreter and explains that they are to travel to the pump station and fill a tanker with water to bring back to the village every day. At the station, the Army engineers working on the pump explain that it will take many weeks to finish repairs, but that the repairs would go much faster if Staff Sergeant Harper could recruit some of the villagers to help. Back at the village, they inform the locals that they will pay anyone who shows up to work the next morning. However, when the morning comes, there is no one there by the time they are ready to leave. With no labor forthcoming from the village, they are forced to help the engineers themselves. During one return trip, a vehicle is spotted coming up behind them at high speed. They stop the vehicle and interrogate the driver, but learn he is taking his young daughter to another village for medicine. During another trip, they are attacked by several insurgents with small arms, who shoot holes in the tank. The next day, while passing out water, gunfire breaks out. They engage in a pitched firefight with several enemy shooting from the rooftops, during which Chutsky is killed.