Generation Kill (2008) – Brutally honest

Genre – War Movie (true story)

Time: 7 episodes x 1 hour each

Platform: Disney + Hotstar

Fact:   The US Armed Forces learned the hard way from their Vietnam War Experience that they had lost the general narrative in that war, thanks to daring news reporters who reported from the frontline, sometimes while in actual combat, and whose views contradicted the “we are winning the war against the communists” line tom-tomed during daily press briefings. So, during the First Gulf war called Operation Desert Storm (Jan-Feb 1991), the Armed Forces didn’t exactly control the narrative but saw to it that reporters, now equipped with satellites, would show only what the Armed Forces wanted to show. The overall view that emerged was of a “good war” against Saddam Hussein and his despotic regime.

Again in Operation Iraqi Freedom in March 2003, reporters were ‘embedded’ with the frontline units in combat . Some of these reporters gave some very hard brutal accounts of the overall war. Generation Kill is based on the reporting of journalist Ewan Wright from Rolling Stones magazine, who was embedded with the First Marine Recon Platoon – the elite among the Marines who were always in the thick of the action as recon troops usually are. His reporting over the weeks of action that ended with the toppling of Saddam’s statue in Baghdad, showed modern warfare as it was – brutal, at times silly, poignant and got the overall feel of the war accurately without passing any judgement on the troops who were doing the fighting.

TV series:  Rare is the TV series or film that lives upto the source material, in this case Ewan Wright’s book. Having read the book, I can confirm that the TV series is true to the book in showing how the American troops behaved with a combination of sobriety, jingoism, stupidity, gung-ho idiocy, and plain higher-level madness that is typical of any war. Thus, you have all the central characters around whom the TV serial is focused.

• Staff Sergeant Brad “Iceman” Colbert, (Alexander Skarsgård), an absolute professional, who calmly leads his troop and vehicles and whom the troop readily follow.
• Evan Wright (Lee Tergesen) who is in the lead vehicle with “Iceman” and observes the entire ‘trip’ through Iceman’s actions.
• Driver Corporal Josh Ray Person, (James Ransone) , who drives the Humvee and is given to nonstop talking due to his intake of “uppers” to stay awake.
• Lance Corporal Harold James Trombley, (Billy Lush), who is only interested in killing Iraqis and is the cause of an incident where he fires on innocent civilians, due to a “kill everything that moves” order.
• First lieutenant Nathaniel Fick (Stark Sands), the capable platoon leader, and an officer the recon troop trusts as he at times covers their misdeeds, especially during the preparatory period

The platoon dislikes all the other officers, especially “Captain America”, whom they all know is a gung-ho idiot, but who is an officer who has the ears of the higher ups for his supposed aggression. They also dislike their CO who wants to be the first into Baghdad but know that he is an otherwise capable officer, who at times makes errors of judgement

In between you have the entire gamut of experiences of the troop but mostly it is disdainful of the local Iraqis, calling them names such as Hajis, ragheads, towelheads just to dehumanize them so that they do not feel any remorse on killing them. There are also “Blue on Blue” incidents where friendly fire destroys their supply truck, leading to its own set of consequences. The overall picture that emerges is of a trigger-happy bunch of Marines who think that killing enemies is probably the most viscerally exciting thing they could do. As one of their own says to the reporter “we are like pitbull terriers trained to kill and then tied up by our country. Once in a while our country lets us go amok in another country”. Probably one of the best descriptions of a new generation of soldiers who are barely regretful of what they do and revel in killing.

As is required for such a topic, the cast did a two-week military boot camp to get their actions and lino correct. It shows – we don’t see the actors but the Marines being Generation Kill.

Historical Background – 5 out of 5

Script – 4 out of 5

Story – 5 out of 5

Direction – 5 out of 5

Photography – 4 out of 5

Kit and equipment – 4 out of 5

 Total – 4.5 out of 5