Generation Kill (Movie Review)

Generation Kill is the shockingly frank, highly acclaimed firsthand account of Marines in the midst of combat. It shows the gruesome, morally ambiguous and traumatic realities of war. It is also the portrait of a platoon’s personalities, including egos, rivalries and friendships, in the face of death and destruction. Wright and the cast of his miniseries do not shy away from exposing their characters’ biggest flaws, from rankism to sexual indiscretions.

The story opens with 2nd Platoon of the 1st Reconnaissance Battalion at Camp Mathilda, Kuwait. As embedded reporter Evan Wright (Lee Tergesen) settles in, he gets a frosty reception from the men of Bravo Company. They are used to receiving orders from command, and when they see that he writes for Rolling Stone, they assume he is a left-wing liberal media guy who doesn’t support the war.

Over the course of the series, we learn about the men of First Recon, a new breed of warriors unrecognizable to their forebears – a group raised on hip-hop, Marilyn Manson, the Real World and video games. We witness their triumphs and horrors – physical, moral, psychological, emotional and spiritual – in a war they never expected to fight.

Many of the Marines who served with 1st Recon were brought in as consultants for the show, a fact that no doubt helped add to its authenticity. One such Marine, Sergeant Rudy Reyes, even agreed to play himself in the miniseries and say lines as himself that he’d never actually say, a experience that he says was “surreal.” The most memorable character from the series, though, is Capt. Schwetje, a man seemingly perpetually on the edge of a psychotic breakdown, who once fired his collection of enemy A-Ks indiscriminately out the window of his command vehicle and tried to bayonet an Iraqi prisoner.