just watch it!

Better Late Then Never

Am I Missing Something?

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

This remarkable documentary centers on a troop of American soldiers in Iraq who make their base of operation in the bombed-out remains of Saddam Hussein's pleasure palace. The soldiers interviewed herein candidly discuss killing enemy soldiers, the bitter possibility of being killed in combat, and how no one but themselves will ever fully understand what they're going through while fighting in the war. A majority of these soldiers are fresh-faced teenagers straight out of high school who hail from obscure small American towns; their charming sense of naiveté and wide-eyed innocence puts a genuinely human face on war itself that's alternately funny, sad, shocking, and ultimately quite moving. The filmmakers follow the soldiers as they carry out their sometimes useless and often dangerous daily routine missions and goof around Hussein's palace in their spare time. Several soldiers perform incredible rap songs that are not only profane and amusing, but also very profound and touching. This movie thankfully eschews politics and preaching in favor of simply letting the soldiers tell their own story in their own words; this gives the picture a strong sense of urgency and intimacy that's both powerful and impossible to shake. The chaos, boredom and frightening unpredictability of war is vividly captured by the compelling anecdotes related by the soldiers. An amazing achievement that's essential viewing for anyone interested in seeing the soldiers' perspective on the war in Iraq.

When I say that Gunner Palace should have been more, I don't mean that it should have been a better or more in-depth look at the lives of the troops in Iraq. Indeed, it is one of the closest looks at the daily lives of the soldiers over there that we have been able to see since the war started, but Director Michael Tucker has no idea how to get good interviews from the soldiers, and he messes it up even worse when he decides to talk. It's really sad that so many of the soldiers were handed this incredible opportunity to give a first account depiction of what their experience is like in Iraq and they use it to just screw around and act like idiots. Granted, a lot of these kids are barely out of high school, but I wish Tucker would have concentrated on the ones that had something important to say. I have all the respect in the world for these guys, but when it comes to getting an idea of what it's like to live in Iraq in a time of war, I'd be happy to stick to the guys that want to really talk about what's important, I could do without the interviews of the guys that just want to be funny.The guys that just want to be funny, of course, do not include the musicians featured in this documentary. Most of them are not making the kind of music that I am interested in but it is good to see that so many of them take their difficult experiences and channel it into something productive.The biggest problem that I had with this movie, however, is the goofy, melodramatic voice-over that Tucker put in every once in a while. Yes, it is some pretty dramatic subject matter, but the way that Tucker narrates this documentary reminds me at times of the way John Bunnell hosts World's Wildest Police Videos. He over-dramatizes everything in a way that just makes it sound goofy (I once saw an episode where a car running from the police went briefly onto the shoulder on a country road and knocked down a couple of pieces of rotted wood that were sticking up through the dry grass, and Bunnell chimes in, "the fleeing madman SMASHES through a wooden barricade!!!").Tucker doesn't fill his documentary with unnecessary hyperbole like Bunnell does, but rather with a misplaced theatrical performance as the narrator. Where simple descriptions would have been sufficient, Tucker opts for an added performance that just makes him hard to listen to. When it comes to a direct look at the lives of the troops in Iraq, I just don't think anything extra is necessary, but it seems that he concentrates more on this than on the really relevant things that are going on. There are some soldiers who do give important insight, but so much time is wasted and so much extra fluff is put in that it makes a lot of the documentary look like farce.

When the soldiers of "Gunner Palace" fall down laughing as a comrade explains to the filmmaker that the improvised armor on their Humvee, "Will probably slow down the shrapnel so that it stays in your body instead of going clean through. And that's about it!" Inexperienced film goers might be horrified. Yet this is a true aspect of life in the military.Watch, "Heartbreak Ridge", "Blackhawk Down" or even "MASH", or see the Canadian Arrows air show team around a piano singing a silly song about a pilot's parachute catching fire and falling to his death and you will see that soldiers under stress make fun of the very things that may kill them. It is their way of dealing with situations that are greatly less than ideal which keeps them sane.The subtlety of "Gunner Palace" may be missed by many. The constant use of the Armed Forces Radio voice-over, which continually drones on happily, and glibly about the success of the war while the soldiers experience the opposite is a huge key to the film's meaning. The official line that the soldier's government and commanders give them almost always contradicts their everyday experience. "I think it is a cluster F***, Sir," to quote Sgt. Highway (Clint Eastwood).And that is a reality of war that "Gunner Palace" truthfully tells. Our soldiers deserve the best but any army that goes to war, goes to war with the supplies it has, not always the supplies it wishes it had. Past history reveals that some mistakes in war are more damaging than others and the consequences oftentimes highly dependent on the strange twists of circumstance. Time will tell if the mistakes in Iraq will prove fatal or not.While some of the soldiers may come off as overbearing, Iraq is a combat zone and the movie portrays the US Army, not the Peace Corp. "The Army is a broad sword, not a scalpel." (Bruce Willis, "The Siege") No nineteen or twenty year old is going to be a philosopher king in a hostile situation.Some may debate for a long time whether or not, "Gunner Palace" is anti or pro war. Although I believe them to be fairly clear, appreciation of the film is not dependent at all on the directors' political views. Despite its rough edged story line, "Gunner Palace" is a successful attempt to show the real lives of the everyday soldier in Iraq and the irony and senselessness that war can oftentimes bring.

This documentary is well worth seeing for one reason -- more than anything I've seen about the Iraq war, it gives the American soldier's point of view on fighting in Iraq. The news-bites and short glimpses of the war given the American public on television are filtered down so much by the time they get to your screen that you feel like you've seen nothing and gained no insight about what is really going on there. If you have a family member or friend fighting over there, you MUST see this film to better appreciate their perspective.What this film does not do, however, is provide any sort of an Iraqi perspective on the fighting. Granted, there are interviews with Iraqi informants employed by the American military and and several shots of suspected insurgents being detained, but there is no attempt to show the average Iraqi's point of view about the conflict. In other words, this documentary is a very subjective and one-sided perspective, but it is still very worthwhile.I went to see it with a friend whose brother is currently fighting over there, and she said it was remarkable how well it captured the soldiers' off-time activities and philosophies about the fighting. Her brother and his buddies had made some video footage of their own and it was very similar in that regard. What the documentary doesn't show, and what her brother's video did show, was the dismembered bodies, the hellish and disorienting firefights, and the horrified, screaming civilians. One should not go into a screening of this film believing that they will experience the war or see what it's really like. One has to be there to understand.