Generation Kill (2008)

Truly Dreadful Film

Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

The 'war' series follows a reporter from rolling stones magazine while he joins the 1st marines in their road trip through Baghdad. They sing, they banter, they drink, they jack off and they shoot at terrorists (although this is very limited.) The majority of series doesn't even involve combat situations. It's just the marines driving through the Iraqi wilderness singing along to bad music and taking the mickey out of each other. Girls that I have talked to who have watched this show call this "a highlight" This is good for short stretches or for those in armed services who spend days on end doing this but it just got boring after a while and I was wondering when any sort of fighting would come to fruition...It never came.At the end of the series there's a football game where all the marines (bar one)is ripped with their shirts off exposing their muscles. This is to entice your moronic and unsatisfied girlfriend into thinking the series was 'good.' The small one then picks on the big one who retaliates, the small one then walks off and cries. Afterwards they watch a homemade video about their exploits in Iraq. All the marines leave before the video finishes to give an anti war propaganda feel.The whole series is just a tease, it seems like the writers were spending 10 episodes developing characters leading up to some big conflict which never came.

Something that always sticks with me about Generation Kill is the that there is no musical score. Instead in the scenes where one would traditionally hear a song pop up, the cast end up singing it. I thought this was pretty cool.Although linear in storyline, GK is awesome in that it meanders along and not littered with plot devices. As a viewer you get a sense of sitting around waiting with the soldiers.I have never served in the military but the dialogue strikes me as being loyal to what soldiers in these situations would be talking about.The internal politics and power struggles constantly facing the characters add the element of drama which we face in our everyday lives, but in a war zone setting.The insertion of the journo is good writing because in effect since he is never named, I can assume that he is us, the viewer. He asks the questions we want to know.I have watched this entire series now twice and enjoyed it both times.

I don't know if this mini series is based on facts or not. If it is fictional then disregard my opinion.If this mini series is based on facts then I think it is despicable. I watched 17 minutes of the first one and it has just destroyed the credibility of the fighting men and women of the USA in the eyes of all the kids in schools who send them letters. The way the soldiers are talking about the kids and the disgusting comments towards the kids should warrant criminal charges.I truly hope that it is fictional because otherwise it has just lost my respectability for the US army.

I don't really have my two cents to add to what others already said: it's simply a masterpiece. So it is this simple: get a bunch of Marines (or any kind of soldier, for that matter), reconstruct what they actually did in Iraq, and there's the perfect war movie. Sounds simple, however a reconstruction is worth nothing if it's not painstakingly accurate, from the slightest detail on uniforms to road signs and background characters. Generation Kill truly achieves this. A word of advice: non-native speakers will have serious problems with understanding dialogs, especially if they are not into military jargon and slang. Don't even think about watching it without subtitles.