Maggie Hadleigh-West's film is an honest look at street harassment. People who criticize her confrontational manner are making excuses for the behavior of adults who should know better. Being attracted to someone does not give you the right to approach, speak to or regard them in a manner that they find offensive. A woman walking down the street in a mini skirt and bra top is going to garner a lot of attention, but that is not the point of this film. In the film, Maggie is not dressed provocatively by American cultural standards. She's wearing shorts and a tank top. And yet she is harassed in the same manner than I am when I'm wearing a coat and hat in the middle of February. It's not about the clothes. It's about the overwhelming and disheartening lack of respect for women in this society.One of the things Maggie does best is drive home the chilling connection between business men who "compliment" a woman's body while they're out to lunch, the criminals in trench coats who flash their naked private parts at young girls and the rapist who forces his way into a woman's house and forces himself on her in her own home. "War Zone" is a fantastic film, and I suggest watching it with friends. The ending, especially, can be upsetting.

This film brings up important issues but fails to make any interesting observations or connections. For example, there is the teenage girl who is leered at by some adults while walking in the street. It's disturbing, no doubt, but there is little commentary or significance attached to this in the film. Pedophilia, objectification of women? They're shown here, but without insight. There is also a shot of a man with his penis out at one point in the film, but it seems more for shock value than anything else. The 911 rape call is disturbing and scary, but, again, no connections are made to the objectification of women and rape.The bulk of the film is confrontations of people who leer at or otherwise harass the filmmaker. In these episodes she asks them why they do this. Much of the time the subjects walk away or insult her, which certainly makes for nice documentary footage but does not help to illuminate the subject.The filmmaker has good intentions and it probably will provoke some thought among its viewers, but as a film and societal study it does not delve deep enough into the issues of the objectification of women and violence against women.

I just finished watching the gritty documentary "War Zone" and feel strongly compelled to write my views. While I applaud the film's goal of educating men to the problem of a woman's perception in society, I feel that the message was drowned out in the aggressiveness and confrontational style of its filmmaker.I wholeheartedly agree that the objectification of women is a problem in society and has/can lead to a wealth of terrible situations. However, I do not agree that the answer to this problem is the practice of stripping away the right to privacy of men AND woman in an attempt to "outshout the crowd."Ms. Hadleigh-West certainly made a lot of noise with her denigrating, insulting style of filming, but did she do her important cause any good? For communication to be effective, the message must be delivered in such a way as to influence the recipient toward the speaker's intended viewpoint. The only thing accomplished by this film was to offend by labeling all men as "potential rapists" and damage the cause of women's rights by reinforcing the stereotype of feminists as offensive, confrontational bitches.To put her views in perspective: In the past 15 years, my parked car has been hit in a parking lot on 2 occasions, both times by a female driver. Am I now justified in proclaiming that all women should have their driving privileges revoked? This supposition is as ludicrous as this film's slanderous premise.Her tortured use of an actual 911 call by a rape victim only served to hype her own sense of indignation at the expense of the woman whose life was so brutally violated by the act. While she champions her claim of personal rights and privacy, she continually stripped those rights from all others involved in this film. She repeatedly thrust her camera into the faces of men, insults and degrades them, and then feels vindicated when her harassment provokes ill-tempered reactions. She actually seemed surprised that a man on the sidewalk became angry when she said she imagined he was "unemployable", "had deeply rooted problems", and asked if he were a sex offender.Her constant attacks and blind labels of all men only prove lie to her stated purpose to educate and assist. Ms. Hadleigh-West has simply used a true societal problem to shout from the rooftops, "Look at me, I'm a woman."

While the premise of the film sounded unique and intriguing after watching the first 5 minutes of the film I could have stopped there and gone on with my life. She does get some interesting comments and reactions from her subjects, but not really enough to add to the validity of the film. I also felt she went a bit overboard with many things. If a guy said a filthy comment, grabbed her, or made some disgusting gesture to her, I would say go for it, bring him down, he's a pig. What bothered me though is she would walk around in revealing clothes and be surprised when guys would look at her and give them hell about it.I think somehow she forgot that being attracted to other people is a part of human sexuality and a big part of who we all are. Guys will look at beautiful women, especially when they dress provocatively, just like women will look at men when they are wearing a tight tank or no shirt at all. Some women may hate me for this, but I hope not. I have much respect for women. I was raised by one. I also come from a Spanish family and we are very matriarchal. My grandmother was the center of my family for years, but I don't really feel this did anything to help women's rights and from what the filmmaker even said herself, some women were offended by her project.