This documentary is fairly average as far as docs go, and to me seems like more of a missed opportunity. I suppose it's worth watching but just barely. It's really not worth recommending unless one is particularly fascinated by the Iraq conflict (or Gulf War 2.0 as I call it).
Basically what we have here is an embedded journalist following a certain battalion around as they go on patrols and whatnot, but mostly as they goof around and make asses of themselves during their down time. If this group is representative of the US armed forces then it doesn't bode well for anyone. On the whole, these folks are young, naive, not very well spoken, and fairly misguided. None of them seem to have much idea why they're in Iraq in the first place, and their reasons for joining the military seem simplistic at best, most of them seem to have enlisted for the "adventure". The knowledge that they're largely pawns in a high-stakes game of geo-political chess seems lost on them.
Honestly, this film is rather poorly structured and edited and just barely hangs together. Whatever point the director was trying to get across is pretty vague. A great opportunity to show the horrors of war up close is lost due to the sanitized version of conflict seen herein; no blood, no gore, no death - the very stuff of war. Instead, the alarming naivety of the average US grunt is what came across to me.
The only element of the film that really made me think was the musical soundtrack which consists largely of US soldiers telling their tale through rap. It made me realize that this is the modern "folk" music, if you will; the sound of the streets which anyone with even a modicum of rhyming and linguistic ability can take part in - truly the sound of the people. One line that stayed with me (and I paraphrase): "you don't have to agree with what we do, but please respect it". Sadly, this is easier said than done due to the soldiers own rather murky explanations of what they're doing there in the first place. All I really saw was a lot of wasted potential.
Basically what we have here is an embedded journalist following a certain battalion around as they go on patrols and whatnot, but mostly as they goof around and make asses of themselves during their down time. If this group is representative of the US armed forces then it doesn't bode well for anyone. On the whole, these folks are young, naive, not very well spoken, and fairly misguided. None of them seem to have much idea why they're in Iraq in the first place, and their reasons for joining the military seem simplistic at best, most of them seem to have enlisted for the "adventure". The knowledge that they're largely pawns in a high-stakes game of geo-political chess seems lost on them.
Honestly, this film is rather poorly structured and edited and just barely hangs together. Whatever point the director was trying to get across is pretty vague. A great opportunity to show the horrors of war up close is lost due to the sanitized version of conflict seen herein; no blood, no gore, no death - the very stuff of war. Instead, the alarming naivety of the average US grunt is what came across to me.
The only element of the film that really made me think was the musical soundtrack which consists largely of US soldiers telling their tale through rap. It made me realize that this is the modern "folk" music, if you will; the sound of the streets which anyone with even a modicum of rhyming and linguistic ability can take part in - truly the sound of the people. One line that stayed with me (and I paraphrase): "you don't have to agree with what we do, but please respect it". Sadly, this is easier said than done due to the soldiers own rather murky explanations of what they're doing there in the first place. All I really saw was a lot of wasted potential.