Gunner Palace

This documentary centers around an army unit that has made its base at one of Uday Hussein's "Pleasure" Palaces. Gunner Palace, essentially, traces the lives of the members of the unit from the point of view of Michael Tucker, a reporter embedded with the unit.

What works so well in this film is the simple fact that the viewer is getting to see the actual day to day activities of soldiers stationed in Iraq. It is fascinating and interesting, in this respect. What we are seeing is going on RIGHT NOW. It is unlikely the immediacy of Gunner Palace, and its impact, will be lost on anyone.

Unfortunately, aside from the main strength of the film, the video footage shot by Mr. Tucker, there seems to have been little thought in how to present the information. It is simply not edited well. It proceeds in a somewhat chronological order, but is hampered by an almost comical voice over, I assume done by Tucker, himself. It sounds odd and overly dramatic, even for some as dramatic as war. The narration just doesn't work.

The experiences of the soldiers themselves, are at times, very intriguing and include some amusing and often endearing raps performed by the soldiers about living in Iraq. It's clear that singing about the war, either with an electric guitar or a rap beat drummed out on a jeep is helping them get through the every day stresses they face. Presented more clearly and effectively, these raps could have given a nice structure to the film but seem more random and inserted without thought. And this is a shame, because there seems to have been a great deal of material the director could have drawn from. He was stationed there with them, for God's sake.

Also, somewhat inexplicably, the director/narrator, towards the end of the film, recounts his own experiences leaving Iraq and adjusting to home life again. Why I say this is inexplicable is because one would assume it would be the final moment of the documentary with maybe an epilogue, but rather the film shifts back to Iraq and continues on. It only adds confusion and disrupts the viewers ability to track the events and people appearing in Gunner Palace.

If only to see the faces of the soldiers and citizens in Iraq, as they are actually living, this film is worth seeing. It is a shame, however, that the footage Tucker shot didn't find it's way into more capable hands. Gunner Palace could have been even more compelling and affecting.

The first thing that struck me was that most of the American soldiers portrayed in this documentary apparently were small town guys, with little education and not as articulate as one would hope. They joined the military not out of patriotism, but for imagined adventure. It was the army or community college. I can sympathize with them and at the same time I can understand why the Iraqi people don't like them. They are crass, bullying and overbearing.But they also are willing to take tremendous risks and are sincere in their efforts to bring stability to a country thousands of miles from their own.

The entire Iraqi war seems to be a tragic, confusing mess and where it goes from here, no one really knows. The American soldiers, many just kids fresh out of high school, really want to put in their time and go home. But we know, even if they survive, they will never be the same again.

I have seen this movie and was very moved by it. If you go into it with an open mind and wanting to learn and see first hand what it was like for those boys when they got there and as they are living there. It is hard to say that anything is not politically motivated, but if anything this film tries its best not to be. It is not pro-Bush or anti-Bush, pro-War or Anti-war...it just is what it is. Open honest communication from soldiers to a film maker who they trusted, who lived with them, who saw what they saw.

And if you go into the film thinking that it will be all of that, you will be surprised, if you think that it will be all about what they are doing there and how wonderful it is, you will be surprised and if you think that for one minute you can debate what these boys are saying then for one you are an ass & you will be surprised by what you hear.

I sincerely hope that this film becomes wildly popular so that everyone can see it, and have a better understanding about what is going on over there and what we are all arguing about here at home.

Gunner Palace, a documentary by Michael Tucker that follows the U.S. Army's 2/3 Field Artillery for two months while the cope with occupation duty in Iraq. The title is a conflation of the nickname of the unit, The Gunners, and the fact that they have set up shop in a bombed out palace of Uday Hussein.

I can't find it on the web, but I read a bio that the filmmaker served in the mid to late 80s, roughly the same time I was in the Army. I've latched onto the fact (and I hope it is true) because it explains the tone of the film. When I walked out, I told Jim, who had seen it with me, that this guy wanted to make an anti-war movie, but couldn't quite bring himself to do it.

What we see is as much cinema verities we are likely to get in this politically radioactive conflict. Tucker lets the young troops pretty much be young troops for the camera. They all to some extent (and one in particular a great deal) mug for the camera and utter their doubts, concerns and reveal their conflicts. There don't appear to be many people above the age of thirty, though I find it hard to believe that an entire battalion would be so comprised.

We also see soldier show great restraint in difficult situations. In one scene, a drugged out, dirty and bedraggled street urchin is delivered to a place where he will hopefully find some sort of care. The GIs are careful, almost solicitous of the child, demonstrating a great deal of tenderness when considered in context of the fact that they are in a city where they are compelled to carry heavy weapons and wear body armor.

There is a lot of very scraggly video of nighttime raids. Bear in mind that field artillerymen are trained to shoot high-explosives over the horizon and wreck stuff, not tool around a foreign capital like cops. Again, these young men show tremendous restraint as they round up people suspected of manufacturing roadside bombs and lobbing mortars at their temporary home.

You feel a sense of futility at times as you watch, but a 60 day snapshot of a difficult mission is going to do that. Some of the soldiers make statements that could be found on you garden variety Bush = Hitler website, and it broke my heart. What they are doing is noble and necessary given the condition of the world, though a 20 year old would be hard pressed to put it into proper context. It is a shame for anyone over there doing their best to not feel their due honor.

If you rabidly feel one should speak-no-evil of the war while we are at war, Gunner Palace will irk you or worse. I found it to be sufficiently truthful and sincere to be a must-see. Pro-war and anti-war folk will find inspiration, which may mean it was done just about right.

I ended up liking this quite a bit, although paradoxically the movie's greatest strength (an unwillingness to get wrapped up in the political arguments pro/con on the Iraq war, a willingness more or less to keep the vision down to the grunt's level) is also the movie's big weakness, as it often seems one or two steps removed from raw footage (in fact there's two false endings here, until finally the movie makers concede that they don't know how to end the thing....and then end it). The movie makers start the film suggesting this stuff should be on television and I agree; this really should be a very special "Primetime Live" or something.

That said, the footage is superb, the sense of a grunt's life very well evoked, with individual personalities nicely delineated. For what it is, essentially journalism in documentary film fancy-dress, it's very well done. The movie makers took some real risk; one only wishes more journalists would do the same. I also liked the melange of hip-hop, Islam, metal guitar, doper humor, Army briskness, pop culture references and the like that the film portrays: I have a pet theory that the twenty-first century will be characterized by the multi-cultural stew that GUNNER PALACE and the like portray. Worth checking out.