The Long Road Home

April 2004. The US 1st Cavalry Division has recently relieved the 1st Armored Division in its occupation of Sadr City, Baghdad. Everything seems peaceful until one day a platoon is ambushed in the city while on patrol. The platoon holes up in a house and reinforcements are sent to extract them. However, the relief column is itself ambushed, the main aim of the initial ambush. What follows is a life-and-death struggle against overwhelming odds. Based on actual events.

Pretty good, but requires some patience to get there. I was initially expecting a Generation Kill-like series, i.e. based on a true military story, follow a unit and are engaged by the camaraderie, gritty action scenes. However, the series immediately failed on the engagement front. Scenes showing soldiers with their family seemed token, padded and superficially sentimental. The unit brotherhood also seemed quite artificial, with forced, unnatural-feeling dialogue and interactions.

The first 2-3 episodes were all like this, to the point where I was thinking of giving up on the series. Comparing it with Generation Kill is obviously a very high standard to emulate, as Generation Kill is one of the best military mini-series of all time (only Band of Brothers is better), so maybe disappointment was inevitable.

However, from a point, the series clicked into gear. The soldiers' backstories went from mundane meet-the-family stuff to interesting series of events, linking in with their current situation and revealing their characters. The dialogue and interactions became more plausible. These all lifted the engagement level significantly. In addition. the action got grittier, more intense and more compelling.

The final episode is very poignant, with a great emotionally-manipulative twist. Makes the effects of war very realistic and stark.

Overall, a good series, just don't give up in the first few episodes - it gets a whole lot better.

I'm not sure why the hatred for this series. It leaves a little to be desired concerning backstory, but I think you get enough of it for satisfaction. The show incorporates not only, the Soldier sentiment from the front lines, but also shows what families experience on the home front--that everyone is in this fight together. It also deals with the intricacies of loyalties among those who are native-Iraqis, the struggle in deciding who to side with, and the moral issues the American troops run into, while trying to make it out alive. It also shows the human, family, and team elements common among Soldiers in wartime.

So far I have enjoyed the show. It is full of action and pretty intense gunfights, battles, comms issues (the real, military deal), the whole nine yards.

I've enjoyed the series for its entertainment value, but also for some of the realism and different aspects of what it takes for our troops on the front lines and their families as they take the long road home.

I really can't understand all the negative reviews this series has garnered as I really enjoyed it. It's not the best acted but it depicts a true series of events and does an excellent job of showing how badly the American forces had prepared for urban warfare at that time.

Sending an open truck, without a radio and full of troops into streets of multi-storey buildings packed with well armed insurgents is obviously, in hindsight, just madness but that was what the American military did. In a similar fashion the UK sent out unarmoured Land Rover Defenders before finding out that they tended to get blown up by unscrupulous terrorists. Lessons were learned the hard way back then and the series does a good job of showing that.

Yes the "homeland" stuff is occasionally a bit cheesy but people "Get over yourselves!" and see the entire series for, overall, a relatively inexpensive good bit of TV entertainment.

I meant to start watching this when it started, but forgot about it. I happened to catch it On Demand and wound up watching the first three episodes in one binge.

It's a good show. Yes, we can sit here and pick apart some of the acting or some of this or some of that, but some of these reviews are just asinine.

Honestly, I think some people could save some time and just write "I hate the military. I hate America. I hate God. I am going to bash this show, no matter what an no matter how ridiculously, unless it changes history to reflect my own personal narrative and wants".

It has a "Blackhawk Down" feel to it. The character development is fairly well done, although not necessarily done in the conventional way.

Grab a cold drink and a snack, sit down and enjoy the show. If you want an agenda driven, $$$$$$ heavy production, go watch a movie from the any major studio.

Much of the cinematic coverage of Iraq War was focused on fighting against Saddam's army and the Sunni resistance. This movie focuses on the experience of a U.S. Army unit in the midst of the Shiite area of Sadr City. As such it focuses on the Army's attempt to win "hearts and minds" but also deal with an insurgent threat.

The depictions are gritty and realistic. However, the first couple of episodes have a few glitches. One, it implies that Iraq was considered peaceful prior to the unit's arrival in April 2004, when an active insurgency had been under way since the summer of 2003. Also, members of the unit repeatedly say one the name and rank of one of their fellow soldiers over the radio, which is a big communications security "no-no." However, it does a good job depicting the contemporary military, equipment, uniforms and customs.