ReaderKenka Let's be realistic.

Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

SanEat A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

daniel-ambia This is not a good movie. The director's voice is obnoxious and he is constantly commenting on everything that is happening. The worst part is when he films his own home however many months later and says something to the extent of, "I'm home now and safe, but those guys are still over there risking their lives for our freedom blah blah." Very melodramatically. The background music is poorly produced hip hop by the soldiers in gunner palace and it really doesn't flow well with the rest of the picture. Gunner Palace is boring because the makers tried too hard to strike some sort of nerve and missed completely. The soldiers that are interviewed are not very bright and it's boring to watch unintelligent people talk. While imminent danger is nearby, they never seem to run into any problems throughout the film. I wouldn't call it a war story because where is the war? Might as well watch the evening news reporters stand around interviewing deployed soldiers. Gone are the days of filmmakers actually putting themselves in the sh#t to tell a good story. The makers acted like embedded reporters reporting on only one side of the conflict according to a bunch of nineteen year old morons. You should see Occupation Dreamland. The soldiers are more interesting and the audience gets a better feel for the way things are because Iraqi civilians are interviewed as well. The truth is that a lot of Americans do not treat the Iraqi people very well. It's difficult to do so when you have no idea why you are stuck thousands of miles from home in a desert and you are unaware of how you have been manipulated by your government to occupy a country under false pretexts. Does anyone remember Vietnam? Jesus. It's like it never happened. This movie sucked.

gdamerow 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.

goey312 Wow, and not in a good way, this documentary while i know they didn't try to do this totally made our military over in Iraq look like a bunch of Frat Boys. First you hear a rapper with some very colorful language (swearing) then you get some personal moments with a couple of guys, next thing you know they are relaxing in a swimming pool. OK the whole background for this documentary is that it follows a troop of the US military based in Iraq following the months after the end of major engagement in Iraq. they are based out of a bombed out palace of Saddams. It follows the guys on their routine's through the streets of Baghdad and then out on some of the raids, then to the post raid parties that were thrown. Now i understand that these parties are really just morale boosters, and i have no gripes against our service men and women who risk their lives serving our great country, but the editing and direction of this film is not very positive looking towards our troops.

Paul 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.