Beystiman It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Arianna Moses Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Lachlan Coulson This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

dontspamme-11 "Oppose the war, support the troops"--This tiresome message that some self-identified American "liberals" believe bridges the partisan divide in US politics has become the M.O. of countless American war films and and documentaries since the Vietnam War. It's tiresome because it actually works to re-center US soldiers as 'victims', deflect attention from those most victimized by wars, and generally erases the larger politics in which it is not the individual soldiers, but nationalism, that is most complicit with the violence of war we have now habituated ourselves to as part of the everyday, that we can simply switch off, click away, and ignore.The soldiers here are real people, and the documentary shows that (unlike de Palma's "Redacted" which, while not a documentary, pilfered docu-aesthetics to appear as one, and failing miserably in its delivery because the characters were so one-dimensional). The Iraqis are rarely shown here, except as malcontents pelting rocks at military Humvee, suspected 'insurgents' having their homes broken into late at night, and getting arrested for the sketchiest of reasons. The film attempts to shore up critical reflections on the Iraq debacle near the end, but only as an attempt to convey the impression of a 'balanced view-point.' A passing grade because the film at least tried--even though it fails.

santegeezhe 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.

Rathko 'Gunner Palace' shows the kind of stories that should be on the nightly news. These stories shouldn't be a surprise, but they are. These soldiers, many uneducated and trained to do little more than get from point A to point B without dying, find themselves in a middle eastern city where they have to act as police officers, social workers, political advisers, security guards, probation officers, prison wardens, hospital orderlies, while all the while getting shot at and stoned by the people they are trying to help. Whether you believe in the war or not becomes irrelevant as you realize that these soldiers have been put in an impossible situation. They know it. The viewer knows it. The only person who doesn't seem to know it is Donald Rumsfeld, whose patronizing encouragement drones incessantly from armed forces radio in the background.The film takes place after the war, when the majority of casualties are the result of insurgent bombings, not legitimate warfare. Though we never see the results of such attacks, the effects are clear. The film also makes clear the incredible risks that Iraqis take in trying to create a peaceful democracy for themselves, and the price that many of them pay. Liberal complaints about the lack of violence, scenes of death, and wounded Iraqi civilians are unfounded, and are exposed as the childish and naive fantasies that they are. A flawed documentary that fails to create any real connection or empathy for the individuals involved, but a rare and compelling glimpse onto the streets of Baghdad, nonetheless.

tucker-34 Like the majority of other media, this film shows war without the warfare. Not a single dead body -- Iraqi nor American -- is shown in the film. What is war without blood and death? That is what war is. To not convey this is to not tell the truth.There are verbal references to a few of the 1,827 American soldiers that have died during this war, and to the 23,000 to 100,000 Iraqi civilians that have been killed (depending on what source you use) but there's no raw visual footage that shows what words cannot convey.Instead of showing the full truth of war, the film focuses too much on soldiers partying around a clear blue swimming pool. It could make a great recruitment tool.