The first official trailer for the IFC Films drama Camp X-Ray is here, and I’m not going to waste any time getting to the Kristen Stewart fan take. According to YouTube commenter Christina Nguyen, “This is it. This is gonna be the movie that changes everyone’s perspective of Kristen.” Une De Mai takes it one step further, commenting, “In only two minutes, Kristen Stewart proved why she is one of the best actresses of her generation – if not THE best. I can’t wait to see this movie!” That’s high praise from the YouTube commenting community, so even if K-Stew doesn’t take the stage at the Academy Awards next year for this serious performance, she’ll know that random people love her.
As for the story of Camp X-Ray, it’s one that could possibly change our minds and hearts forever about the ongoing war in the Middle East and the so-called enemies of America that we’ve taken as prisoners. It turns out that these people might actually be… people.
A young woman joins the military to be part of something bigger than herself and her small town roots. But she ends up as a new guard at Guantanamo Bay instead, where her mission is far from black and white. Surrounded by hostile jihadists and aggressive squadmates, she strikes up an unusual friendship with one of the detainees. A story of two people, on opposite sides of a war, struggling to find their way through the ethical quagmire of Guantanamo Bay. And in the process, they form an unlikely bond that changes them both.
If you thought that Stewart has always been a very vanilla actress with the emotional range of a background extra, prepare for a glimpse at the performance that the Hollywood Reporter called “transfixing.” It seems that director Peter Sattler might have finally found a way inside of Stewart’s heart, perhaps learning from Rupert Sanders’s mistake of going through her pants.