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    #26
    Generation Kill

    "before we step off on this next mission i'm reminding you of who the enemy really is. the enemy."

    Possibly the finest rallying speech I've ever heard.

    I was surprised to find that Rudy actually is rudy, and that ray is ziggy from the second series of the wire. does he always play a wired up cunt? And Brad is Swedish?

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      #27
      Generation Kill

      I've watched six episodes now and I'm really impressed. It's got the same underlying realism that The Wire had. I've never been to Baltimore, I've never been in war so I have no idea how real or truthful the visions that Simon creates are but they certainly feel like the truth.

      Some of the dialogue has been inspired - the conversation about Pocahontas has been the highlight for me. It captures the simultaneous boredom and danger of war much better than the likes of Jarhead or other recently released films.

      I still think the buffoonery of superiors is being overplayed though.

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        #28
        Generation Kill

        given that the US only goes to war every 20 years or so, and given that these wars last about 4 days each, I suppose that there is a certain amount of rush for glory amongst the officer corps. particularly when they talk about battle standards etc. You can really see this in the character of the Godfather who desperately wants his soldiers to get involved in a battle, (the airfield 'battle') or to be the most ridiculously far ahead of their army. How else is he going to get promoted or become famous? There has to be some reason for most american casualties coming from friendly fire.

        I haven't seen the sixth episode yet because it's not on surfthechannel. is there anywhere else I can find it?

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          #29
          Generation Kill

          And I am the Life wrote:
          and given that these wars last about 4 days each
          Huh? The US's conflict with Vietnam lasted for 12 years, Afghanistan seven and counting, Iraq five and a half and counting.

          Here is the link for episode 6.

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            #30
            Generation Kill

            The vietnam war was nearly 40 years ago. The war in afghanistan actually lasted a couple of days, and the american army ony played a highly limited role. What you have in iraq and afghanistan now is an occupation. There are no battles to be won, no medals for routing a military enemy, no airfields to capture. Just someone blowing you up with a remote control bomb. No medals, no glory.

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              #31
              Generation Kill

              The war in afghanistan actually lasted a couple of days
              ??????? The first bombing was in early October 2001, the Taliban government fell a couple of weeks before Xmas, and hostilities have continued ever since.

              You do realise that the US's puppet government only controls about 30 per cent of Afghanistan, and that the rest is in the hands of the Taliban and various warlords? If it's not a war, why is it still classed as a war?

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                #32
                Generation Kill

                who's gonna show it on the telly inthe u.k.?

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                  #33
                  Generation Kill

                  the american involvement in afghanistan couldn't really be classified as a proper war. Militarily they provided air support to a bunch of proxies. they also bought off warlords to create new allies. There Very few troops on the ground, until after kabul fell.

                  all that's really changed in afghanistan is that a number of warlords have changed sides back again. it's just the way of afghanistan. and wikipedia is pretty loose in its use of the term war.

                  there are very few medals to be won and little glory to be gained in afghanistan, there are few battle honours to stick on any flag and nothing gets captured. In iraq there were towns to be captured, opponents to shoot up and advances too be made.

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                    #34
                    Generation Kill

                    the taliban killed 10 french soldiers the other day - i think it qualifies as a war.

                    episode 5 of generation kill was a bit sucky - characters turning into cardboard cut-outs again - but episode 6 was much better. i enjoy the intra-marine bitching.

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                      #35
                      Generation Kill

                      it's more of an occupation. vastly more soldiers have died in the occupation of Iraq than died before gw landed his plane.

                      I suppose to make it clearer, there is an enormous pressure on careerist military men to make their mark in what is notionally still the symmetric phase of the war, because there is fuck all glory to be had once it becomes asymmetrical. This is why the godfather is getting them to do stupid things. (you will hold this road with three humvees and a cabbage)

                      Afghanistan was asymmetrical right from the very beginning, and through out. The main part of the fighting and dying was done by afghans, and now the americans and the english sit in their forts as afghanistan carries on pretty much as it has always done.

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                        #36
                        Generation Kill

                        I found the introduction of the reservists in the last episode to be quite terrifying. Assuming it's an accurate depiction of course.

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                          #37
                          Generation Kill

                          The Taliban killed six more NATO soldiers today, three Canadians and three Poles. Up the road, coalition forces killed about 30 militiamen.

                          On Monday, a load of suicide bombers attacked a US base in Khost. One detonated his device, killing ten civilians and wounding 13. The other two were shot dead by police. The following day, more bombers attacked the same base. They were all surrounded and then blew themselves up.

                          It's a war all right.

                          As for Generation Kill, that Latino marine who continually moans about everything and talks in cliches has become deeply annoying over the course of the series. I hope he gets bumped off in the final episode.

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                            #38
                            Generation Kill

                            Did anyone stick with this to the end? The joins in the story were starting to show a bit by the final episode, and two or three bits of dialogue were extremely cheesy. It was a good show overall, but it's hardly in the same league as The Wire.

                            One thing that struck me was the almost total absence of black characters (there was a small handful of Latinos). In 2002, the year before the US invaded Iraq, 15.2% of the Marine Corps was made up of blacks, but you wouldn't know it from watching Generation Kill. Maybe the Rolling Stone guy who wrote the book on which the show was based simply didn't run into any black soldiers while he was over there, though that would seem logistically unlikely.

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                              #39
                              Generation Kill

                              Yes, I stuck with it right up until the Johnny Cash closing.

                              I don't think it was intended to be in the same league as The Wire. Obviously it's shorter so, of necessity, the structure is quite different. But more importantly, though not entirely plotless, it had an ambient feeling that caught the spirit of a bunch of tooled up testosterone driven guys wandering aimlessly around in an alien landscape perfectly. The neurotic pointlessness of it all. The frustration of not being wanted or needed. Of being trained to recognise, then kill, an enemy but not being able to accomplish either. The corrosive effect of inept leadership and careerism on men for whom hierarchy and discipline are everything. I thought it accomplished all that pretty darn well. Sure you didn't get the intense characterisations which were The Wire's strength, but they took many episodes, seasons even, to draw. Generation Kill is a series of sketches rather than a Sistine chapel fresco, but it's no poorer for it.

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                                #40
                                Generation Kill

                                I stumbled upon the airfield episode last night.

                                Godfather's speech about why they couldn't helicopter the kid to the shock trauma unit was one of the better monolouges I've seen. He seems to have shades of Lord Humongus in him (the body, the voice, the way he seems to base his insanity on calculations and reasoning, no hockey mask however.)

                                It's too bad it's not a few seasons. The Iraq War would certainly be ripe for a 5-6 season show. The biggest thing that popped out was how the soldiers trust these women dragging bodies to them, to when a few months/years later those women would be suicide bombers.

                                As AdC said, it seems like a feverish swirl of ideas.

                                It's biggest weakness in any comparison to The Wire, is that it makes Baltimore look 1000% more dangerous than Iraq.

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                                  #41
                                  Generation Kill

                                  This is on TV at the moment, in case anyone missed it (like me).

                                  I'm only 20 minutes into the first episode, and so far my impressions are:

                                  (1.) It's really hard to tell everyone apart in the same camo gear.
                                  (2.) Obviously I recognise Ziggy, but is that a beardless Colicchio as well?
                                  (3.) Is The Godfather's act going to be irritatingly everpresent?

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                                    #42
                                    Generation Kill

                                    Stick with it . . .

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                                      #43
                                      Generation Kill

                                      Yes. This really was a slow burner for me--much slower than The Wire. But I ended up thinking it was absolutely superb.

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                                        #44
                                        Generation Kill

                                        So far, so good. Episode two. That Captain America is a loathsome chap.

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                                          #45
                                          Generation Kill

                                          Watched the last episode on Sky+ last night and read the book from cover to cover last week.
                                          Excellent stuff.

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                                            #46
                                            Generation Kill

                                            Yeah, isn't it good?

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                                              #47
                                              Generation Kill

                                              I'm two episodes into this so I'm not going to read everyone else's posts for fear of spoilers (to the extent that a true story can be spoilered), but my thoughts so far are...

                                              It's very good, and I'm appreciating the usual Simon/Burns pitiless realism, but it's not as ambiguous and multi-layered as The Wire. At every point, I can clearly see what Generation Kill is trying to say. That was never the case with The Wire. I guess that's what comes from adapting someone else's magazine article(s) for the screen rather than writing your own stuff from scratch.

                                              Even so, it makes its points powerfully: war is hell, invading a country and winning hearts and minds is impossible (and shitting in people's gardens doesn't help), and snap 50/50 decisions have massive repercussions.

                                              The scene at the end of Ep 1, with the "unsurrendered" Iraqis being sent back down the railway track to their certain deaths, was incredible.

                                              One bit I thought was a bit cheesy was when the angry little ginger commander (the one obsessed with "grooming standards") is shouting orders and a palm tree blows up behind him and he doesn't flinch. A blatant nod to Robert Duvall in Apocalypse Now, and the sort of cinematic inter-referentiality which I enjoy in other context but which, in something as intense as GK, breaks the spell for a second or two.

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                                                #48
                                                Generation Kill

                                                I sometimes wonder whether there's a union somewhere ensuring that any US-made war film has to have a shouty, volcanic drill sergeant or sergeant major.

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                                                  #49
                                                  Generation Kill

                                                  Wow, whoever said "it's hotting up now" re. episode 3... no shit!

                                                  ***Mild spoilers...***

                                                  Seems incredible that a platoon leader would deliberately put his badly-equipped and flimsily-armoured men in severe danger (and pass up the chance to acquire useful recon info) in a reckless effort to gain the attention of his superiors, but this is a true story so we must assume it happened (and happens). Lions led by donkeys.

                                                  I probably shouldn't have, but I laughed long and loud at "We got two foot models here..."

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                                                    #50
                                                    Generation Kill

                                                    One minor complaint about episode 3 (like the exploding palm tree in episode 2) - and it's very minor - is the shot with the scorpion on a rock as the convoy drives past. Too trad-Hollywood.

                                                    One thing I've enjoyed about Generation Kill is that I've noticed it has an almost Dogme-like approach to camera angles. With only a couple of exceptions (a sweeping overhead view of the entire Marine corps on the move), you only ever view things from an eye-level angle from which an actual grunt would see things.

                                                    (Not that that rules out the scorpion shot, of course. It was just a bit cheesy.)

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