2026 • 116 min
Mr. Nelson, Did You Kill People?
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Synopsis
Born into an impoverished family in New York, Allen Nelson chooses to enlist in the Marines at just eighteen, seeing a military career as an opportunity to escape poverty and discrimination. Initially stationed in Okinawa, at Camp Hansen, he is sent to the front in Vietnam in 1966, driven by the desire to prove his worth like the heroes in the movies. The reality of the conflict, however, turns out to be very different from his expectations of glory. Under the pretext of Viet Cong infiltrations among the civilian population, people of all ages become targets, leading him to commit killings in a landscape of unspeakable brutality. Returning home at the age of twenty-three, he finds himself trapped in a continuous nightmare, made of sleepless nights and days tormented by the memory of the atrocities he has witnessed. Unable to tolerate darkness or sudden noises, he watches his relationships progressively disintegrate, eventually ending up living on the streets. In this condition of total isolation, the only person he can turn to is Dr. Daniels, a psychiatrist at a healthcare facility for war veterans, who provides him with support and a course of therapy.
Review
4 min read
Reviewed by Achille
· 09. September 2026
From the question “Mr. Nelson, did you kill people?” to “Why did you kill?”
It is the question the psychologist keeps asking him. Allen answers in different ways, all equally evasive: because I had to, because I was a soldier, because I was at war. All answers that remain distant from the only truth: Allen killed because he wanted to.
A raw and honest answer, born of a painstaking exploration of his battered psyche. An awakening that does nothing but open another door onto an even deeper and darker void. To win a war, men are not enough; machines are needed. To win a war, the enemy must be perceived as something non-human. War becomes extermination. Death becomes the outcome of an order carried out.
Three rules are imposed when Allen is recruited: “Don’t think,” “Follow orders,” “Kill.” A meticulously engineered system that does not coerce, force, or impose, but persuades, indoctrinates, and domesticates.
Can he therefore truly be held entirely responsible for the atrocities he committed?
The will, the freedom to choose, are reduced to illusions within a system that allows you to decide only among options it has already selected for you.
This is why Allen loses his temper and decides to speak at a school when Sean, his partner’s son, expresses his intention to enlist: he cannot allow him to fall into the same trap. He cannot allow him to set in motion the first cog of a terrifyingly infallible system.
After returning from Vietnam, Allen tries to resume a peaceful life, but in order to do so, he must first become human again.
Forgetting is not an option. The moldy food in the garbage reminds him of piles of corpses. Loud, sudden noises remind him of ambushes.
Confronting his own pain through the image reflected in the mirror appears to be the only option. And psychoanalysis does precisely this. Allen retraces his transformation from man into automaton: from the moment when pulling the trigger while someone is in his sights seems impossible, to the point where he no longer hesitates to open fire even on innocent women and children.
War is death. It is death for those who cease to be alive, and death for those who cease to be human.
Particularly significant is the moment of childbirth, an emblematic confrontation between Eros and Thanatos. It acts as a trigger, pushing Allen’s psyche to the limit. The soldier enters a hole dug by the Viet Cong. There he finds a woman, a young girl in labor. Allen is supposed to kill her. But he restrains the part of himself that has become a killing machine. He helps her give birth. And she, unknowingly, helps him reflect.
If life is not merely the beginning of a series of chemical reactions, why should death be merely their cessation? The beginning of life is an extraordinary, tender, hopeful event, just as its end is devastating, brutal, and destabilizing.
During the sessions, Allen desperately clings to logic, seeking a rational explanation; but his irrational side cannot—or rather, does not want to—move forward. His soul remains imprisoned within an irreparable trauma.
It is from this internal fracture that the need to tell his story emerges, transforming the group meetings into confession.
The meetings thus acquire a dual meaning: on the one hand, they are a way for him to help society, exposing every illusion and every false hope attached to war; on the other, beneath his commitment to civil service lies a far more visceral need.
His public accounts ultimately become his only form of therapy: the only moments when Allen does not collapse beneath the weight of memory are those in which he strips away every defense and confronts the vertigo of his own crimes.
Yet this cure soon turns into an obsession, into a genuine emotional dependency.
Evoking the great dilemmas of ethics and moral philosophy, explored extensively in The Basics of Philosophy, a fundamental question therefore arises: is personal absolution truly possible?
In keeping with the film just mentioned, Allen’s trajectory demonstrates that words and logic may temporarily quiet the demon of guilt, but they can never erase it. No matter how many meetings he holds, the wound will remain open.
This movie was in the official competition of 83rd Venice International Film Festival 2026
