Dave Shiflett (Bloomberg) – HBO’s “Generation Kill” will thrill fans of David Simon and Ed Burns, who brought us “The Wire,” that gritty tale of urban warfare in Baltimore. This time the target is Baghdad and environs. The seven-part miniseries, which runs Sunday nights starting July 13 at 9 p.m. New York time, is told from the perspective the Marine’s First Reconnaissance Battalion, the “tip of the spear” in the ground invasion of Iraq. You wouldn’t want to meet these guys in a dark desert – or a well-lighted one. You might not want you sister to meet them either, unless she’s very tough. Based on the award-winning book by Evan Wright, a Rolling Stone reporter embedded with the First Recon, the series starts out as the troops cool their heels in northern Kuwait awaiting the green light from Lt. Col. Stephen “Godfather” Ferrando (Chance Kelly), whose raspy voice, he informs Wright (played by Lee Tergesen) is not the result of smoking, but throat cancer. “I guess I got lucky,” he croaks. The large cast also includes David Barrera, Josh Barrett, Neal Jones, Billy Lush, Michael Kelly, Alexander Skarsgard, John Huertas, Marc Menchaca, Eric Nenninger, Wilson Bethel, Benjamin Busch, J. Salome Martinez Jr. and Brian Patrick Wade. They portray very tough guys, though Wright says there are no fictional or composite characters in the series. One Marine has A-bomb envy, wishing he had been in on the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Soldiers mock letters from school children who believe peace is better than war. Au contraire, comes one response: “War is the mother------- answer.” Viewers with G-rated ears may want to find something else to watch. These Marines often make the street criminals on “The Wire” sound like ushers at a tent revival. They’re also a sensitivity trainer’s worst nightmare. In one of the more printable cultural observations, one Marine recalls a woman with “eyes so slanty you could blindfold her with dental floss.” Racial and sexual epithets are delivered with mini-gun speed. And while there are no women at the tip of this spear, they have a definite presence. The grunts are wary of Wright until he reveals that he once wrote the “Beaver Hunt” feature for Hustler magazine, which makes him an immediate hero. And in a profoundly unprintable analysis, a soldier explains why the entire war could have been avoided if the sexually repressed Republican Guard had spent a week in Vegas. There’s not much combat in the opener, though one soldier is burned by an exploding espresso machine. Instead there’s a focus on the mundane aspects of military life. Skoal smokeless tobacco is popular, and while Skittles candy is allowed in Humvees, Charms are banned because they’re thought to bring misfortune. Meantime, soldiers endure pettiness at an extreme level. Sergeant Major John Sixta (Neal Jones) enforces the unit’s “moustache protocol” with howitzer-level ferocity, one reason why he’s known, far behind his back, as “Mr. Potato Head.” While the series focuses on the initial weeks of the war, it includes controversies that have marked the five-year conflict. The first encounter with armed Iraqis results in the Marines being ordered to hold their fire, an example of rules of engagement many soldiers believed are dangerously stringent, and perhaps of a killjoy nature. “I had a beautiful head shot,” complains one sharpshooter. Meantime, refugees given promise of safe haven are given serious reason to regret their trust. Yet this isn’t a politicized version of the invasion, but instead promises to show the war in realistic terms. Simon and Burns do deliver some memorable lines I don’t recall hearing from network embeds, including a classic from a soldier watching the bombardment unfold through night-vision glasses: “Damn, I wish I had some ‘shrooms.” www.hbo.com (Dave Shiflett is a critic for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.) To contact the writer of this story: Dave Shiflett at dshifl@aol.com. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Manuela Hoelterhoff in New York at +1-212-617-3486 or mhoelterhoff@bloomberg.net.
