One captain in the 2003-era US Marine Corps’ First Reconnaissance
Battalion is dumb and deluded; another’s paranoid, manic and dangerous.
Their boss is capable, but accolade-hungry—he sends his marines into
situations their unarmored Humvees aren’t equipped to handle.
Journalist Evan Wright was embedded with First Recon during the early
stages of the Iraq war. Generation Kill, an HBO miniseries from
the brain-trust behind The Wire (David Simon and Ed Burns), is
based on Wright’s book of the same name, and follows the battalion
through the poorly planned chaos of the war’s first phase. It’s easy to
guess what attracted Burns and Simon to this wartime story: The messy
politics governing First Recon are reminiscent of the flawed Baltimore
infrastructure they so compellingly brought to life on The Wire.
GK‘s lack of background music and unnecessary exposition,
hilarious, realistic dialogue, commitment to authenticity and high
quality are similarly Wire-esque. Simon and Burns had five
seasons to gently build The Wire‘s complex world and characters;
here they only have seven episodes, so characters that likely would
have been fleshed out if GK were longer stay one-note here.
One-note for Burns and Simon, that is.
This article appears in Jan 29 – Feb 4, 2009.