TIFF 2012 Review: I DECLARE WAR Goes To Battle with Boys and Bullying

One weekend day a number of the nerdier kids from the local middle school gather their sticks and twine and balloons filled with red dye, and head into the local woods to play capture-the-flag.  Oh, those tweens today with their Bieber hair-cuts and their war games.  While we are never given any visual context of this one-day war, it is implied that these games have been going on for some time and someone is keeping statistics.  Jason Lapeyre's odyssey of two groups of children battling in the forest (no this ain't The Hunger Games, more like a leafy, agora-version The Stanford Prison Experiment) is a peculiar, but totally engrossing combination of make-believe and reality.  At that age friendships seem like everything, everything takes on air of importance and intensity.  The film often shows real guns and grenades (and explosions) even if the kids are just using whatever sticks and whatever hobby kit items they happen to have crafted into weapons.  Make no mistake however, the kids take their game very serious; there are rules (handily communicated in the animated opening credits, so as to not belabour the exposition) and things are played with strategy and a chain of command.  I Declare War delights in juxtaposing war-film cliches with a real ear for 12 year old banter.  Its war sequences are a combination of thrilling battles and humorous knowing nods; certainly for those who grew up in the 1970s, but probably anyone who grew up with a creek behind their house.