What would it take to bring emotions about the cost of the Iraq war to a boil, to the sort of political awareness and anger that audiences would flock to see an infuriating, even incendiary document like Phil Donahue and Ellen Spiro’s “Body of War,” which traces the cost of war across the contours of one soldier’s broken body, Tomas Young, who returns from battle paralyzed from the waist down. When “Body of War” focuses on Young’s story, it’s piercing, necessary stuff; a parallel component about the October 2002 vote in the Senate for the Iraq War Resolution is less successful. A polemic against damaged lives discarded by any political system is pungent enough on its own accounting. Young never gets old. Music by Eddie Vedder. 87m. (Ray Pride)
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