Roger Ebert Gets Gunner Palace

Posted By Blackfive

Gunner Palace opens today in two theaters around Chicago.  I saw the premiere here a few weeks ago, and I'll be going to see it again with some friends.

Roger Ebert reviewed it.  There's been a lot of half-assed reviews that compare Gunner Palace to the Frontline shows or movies about war.  Ebert gets it.  It's a documentary.

"Gunner Palace" is a ground-level documentary, messy and immediate, about the daily life of a combat soldier in Iraq. It is not pro-war or anti-war. It is about American soldiers, mostly young, who are strangers in a strange land, trying to do their jobs and stay alive.

<...>

That's why this film is so valuable. Not because it argues a position about the war and occupation, but because it simply goes and observes as soldiers work and play, talk and write letters home and, on a daily basis, risk their lives in sudden bursts of violence. Sometimes they translate their experiences into songs. The African-American soldiers, in particular, use hip-hop as an outlet, and their lyrics are sometimes angry, more often lonely and poetic; all wars seem to create poets, and so has this one.

<...>

The filmmakers go along with the Gunners on their nighttime patrols, and the camera follows them into houses harboring suspected terrorists. Gunfire breaks out at unexpected moments. You don't see this on TV. Tucker, who photographed his own movie, was willing to take risks, and the Gunners were willing to have him come along with them; you can sense by the way they relax in front of the camera and confide their thoughts that they were comfortable with him, accustomed to him. What's working here is the technique Fredrick Wiseman uses in his documentaries: He hangs around for so long that he disappears into the scene, and his subjects forget that they're on camera.

That doesn't mean Tucker catches them off guard, or finds them cynical or disloyal. It's a truism of war that a combat soldier of any nation is motivated in action not by his flag, his country, his cause or his leaders, but by his buddies. He has trained with them, fought with them, seen some of them die and others take risks for him, and he doesn't want to let them down. That's what we feel here, along with the constant awareness that death can come suddenly in the middle of a routine action...

Ebert gave the documentary three and half stars.  He also wonders if a soundtrack will be available for the film.  There's one in the works and I'll post info when I receive it.

LONG LIVE WILF!!!

---

Mission: To protect and promote the reputation and dignity of America's Warriors.
Join us!

Comments

Roger Ebert Gets Gunner Palace

Gunner Palace opens today in two theaters around Chicago.  I saw the premiere here a few weeks ago, and I'll be going to see it again with some friends.

Roger Ebert reviewed it.  There's been a lot of half-assed reviews that compare Gunner Palace to the Frontline shows or movies about war.  Ebert gets it.  It's a documentary.

"Gunner Palace" is a ground-level documentary, messy and immediate, about the daily life of a combat soldier in Iraq. It is not pro-war or anti-war. It is about American soldiers, mostly young, who are strangers in a strange land, trying to do their jobs and stay alive.

<...>

That's why this film is so valuable. Not because it argues a position about the war and occupation, but because it simply goes and observes as soldiers work and play, talk and write letters home and, on a daily basis, risk their lives in sudden bursts of violence. Sometimes they translate their experiences into songs. The African-American soldiers, in particular, use hip-hop as an outlet, and their lyrics are sometimes angry, more often lonely and poetic; all wars seem to create poets, and so has this one.

<...>

The filmmakers go along with the Gunners on their nighttime patrols, and the camera follows them into houses harboring suspected terrorists. Gunfire breaks out at unexpected moments. You don't see this on TV. Tucker, who photographed his own movie, was willing to take risks, and the Gunners were willing to have him come along with them; you can sense by the way they relax in front of the camera and confide their thoughts that they were comfortable with him, accustomed to him. What's working here is the technique Fredrick Wiseman uses in his documentaries: He hangs around for so long that he disappears into the scene, and his subjects forget that they're on camera.

That doesn't mean Tucker catches them off guard, or finds them cynical or disloyal. It's a truism of war that a combat soldier of any nation is motivated in action not by his flag, his country, his cause or his leaders, but by his buddies. He has trained with them, fought with them, seen some of them die and others take risks for him, and he doesn't want to let them down. That's what we feel here, along with the constant awareness that death can come suddenly in the middle of a routine action...

Ebert gave the documentary three and half stars.  He also wonders if a soundtrack will be available for the film.  There's one in the works and I'll post info when I receive it.

LONG LIVE WILF!!!

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d8341bfadb53ef00d8342368b853ef

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Roger Ebert Gets Gunner Palace:

» In Today's Army Times from dave's not here | David Earney
The 14 March 2005 issue of Army Times, out in our Mail Room today, carried the following front page headline: Band of Bloggers: Soldiers are online [Read More]