"What we wanted was a very truthful documentary feel to the piece that wasn't going to take a political position but told it as it was from the ground," says White. It is based on the work of Rolling Stone journalist Evan Wright who was embedded with the marines of the first reconnaissance battalion as they journeyed from Kuwait to Baghdad.Īfter the show went out in the US, internet chat rooms were full of praise from members of the military for the programme's realism, which was exactly what director Susanna White was aiming for. The show is the latest offering from The Wire's creators David Simon and Ed Burns. Now it is the turn of the British critics to make their minds up about Generation Kill, a TV mini-series tracing the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. And like the intractable drug war that Simon and company waged on “The Wire,” it is, indeed, a sight to behold.Variety magazine called it "so real you'll-forget-it's-drama" and the Hollywood Reporter hailed it as "utterly riveting". Separate from all the political platitudes delivered about “supporting the troops,” though, “ Generation Kill” offers a chance to see those troops in their full, unfettered, foul-mouthed glory. War fatigue has already been blamed for dwindling news coverage from Iraq and tepid box office performance by several related movies, which perhaps fostered a queasiness that led HBO to schedule the series in a fallow part of the TV calendar - 10 months removed, alas, from the next round of Emmy consideration. Writers Simon and Burns (and directors Susanna White and Simon Cellan Jones) engender sympathy toward the warriors without flinching from the innocent lives taken under the ever-fluctuating ROE, or Rules of Engagement. As a consequence, the material hews closer to FX’s laudable “Over There,” which also sought to present the Iraq war through soldiers’ eyes (as well as spouses back home) but in hindsight suffered for coming too close to the war’s onset.īy contrast, this show’s tight focus on those few weeks and added distance from 2003 provide a stark microcosm of where the war planners erred, from the unit launching its invasion with only one available interpreter to incompetent officers whom the Marines fear are more perilous to their safety than Saddam Hussein’s army. The sly wit, meanwhile, persists throughout, as Marines engage in singalongs to kill time, and one yells “Vote Republican” to waving Iraqis.Īlthough similar in scope, execution and macho camaraderie to “Band of Brothers,” HBO’s foray into WWII’s European theater, this is clearly a much different conflict, conveyed without a trace of sentimentality. Once the shooting starts, a chaotic, claustrophobic vision of war ensues (much of it from inside a Humvee), displaying the ease with which soldiers can come to view the enemy and even the civilian population of “Hajis” as something less than human. The response is equally colorful and unrefined when the self-proclaimed Devil Dogs encounter a female soldier in a later episode. Deployed in the war’s first wave, they’re assigned Rolling Stone reporter Wright (“Oz’s” Lee Tergesen), whom they promptly dismiss as a “dope-smoking peacenik writer.” The scribe makes the mistake of showing the Marines a picture of his girlfriend that’s subjected to every indignity imaginable. Still, after a few episodes, that matters less and less, as viewers get to know the Marines of the First Recon unit, who refer to themselves only half-jokingly as “America’s pit bull” - in that “Once in awhile, they let us out to attack somebody.”įaithfully drawing from Wright’s book, Simon and Burns create crude poetry out of the Marines’ expletive-laden banter - filled as it is with homoerotic jabs, vulgar dissertations on geopolitics (one particularly hilarious monologue concerns the role of sex in screwing up the world) and disdain for higher-ups.Īt the center of these exchanges are the smartass Ray (James Ransone), a sort-of poet laureate of Marine philosophy, and Brad (Alexander Skarsgard), his patient if occasionally equally crass sergeant. The one quibble is that individual characters remain difficult to distinguish, buried as they are beneath so much gear and helmets. The mini encompasses the war’s first 40 days each episode of the seven-part miniseries lasts more than an hour and is replete with bawdy, locker-room humor an overflowing cast (the production notes list 52 characters) and absorbing, tension-filled action sequences - especially those mounted at night and seen through night-vision lenses.
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