Mission Impossible
Timely documentary "Gunner Palace" explores human face of our troops in Iraq

George Bush wants you to believe the mission is accomplished in Iraq. But you get a different story from U. S. soldiers still deployed there, men and women fighting to survive every day in the streets of Baghdad in the compassionate and timely documentary Gunner Palace. Filmmaker Michael Tucker (co-director with his wife and partner Petra Epperlein) made his first trip to Iraq in May, 2003, just after the U. S. government announced the end of "Major Combat." As the summer progressed, Tucker recorded the complex, harrowing and absurdist day-to-day chaos of what the troops call "minor combat."

For two months, Tucker lived with the 2/3 Field Artillery company, "The Gunners," in a tense and dangerous district of Baghdad called Adhamiya. Improbably enough, the 400-person unit was housed in a baroque palace formerly owned by Uday Hussein (son of Saddam), a plushly appointed pleasure temple complete with tiled arches, round bed, swimming pool and a private putting green. The so-called "Gunner Palace" is no less lavish for being a little beat-up in the ouster of its previous occupant. As one of the soldiers observes, "we dropped a bomb on it, and now we get to party in it."

"Party," of course, is a relative term. The palace provides defensible shelter and temporary refuge in a combat zone where political objectives are as muddled and obscure as the identities of enemies and allies alike. By day, the troops patrol the streets of Baghdad in their Humvees, glorified beat cops attracting swarms of children or giving a glue-sniffing teenager a lift home, never knowing when an innocuous-looking plastic bag at the side of the road might be a deadly IED: improvised explosive device.

At night, the troops go out on raids to ferret out suspected bomb-builders and terrorist cells, based on information that may or may not be correct from dubious sources. (A civilian Iraqi interpreter for the troops in one scene is later exposed as an informer for the insurgents.) Most of these troops struggle not to be "the bad guys" in these impossible situations, although they've developed their own practical notion of "positive ID;" as explained by one soldier, "If the motherfucker has a weapon, shoot him." And while they're trying to figure out who's who and what's what, they are subject at any moment to sniper fire or rocket grenades from the insurgents, or rocks and chairs hurled by frustrated civilians who resent the U. S. military presence. If a civil war breaks out, Tucker notes, these soldiers will be targeted by every faction.

The strength of Tucker and Epperlein's film is their refusal to turn it into a diatribe for some political agenda or other. Instead, they focus on the personalities of the soldiers themselves, many of them kids just out of high school with no other job options back home. All of them have to improvise their everyday response to warfare, juggling their expectations and natural compassion with the daily struggle to survive. ("I don't feel like I'm defending my country any more," muses one young soldier.) SPC Stuart Wilf engages in wry wisecracks and plays Hendrix on his electric guitar. (In one funny scene, Wilf tells a story about how slowly time passes back home, to which a buddy provides hilarious impromptu "signing" commentary.) SPC Richmond Shaw turns his experience into propulsive rap rhymes he performs for Tucker's camera. Medic Billie Grimes notes how surprised Iraqi civilians are to meet a female soldier.

The filmmakers include occasional sound byte platitudes from Donald Rumsfeld about the victorious Iraqi occupation to counterpoint the grueling daily experience of the troops actually living it. Besides their primary desire to survive, what these soldiers have in common is the fear that America has forgotten them—or worse, no longer cares, now that combat stories are no longer featured on the nightly news. ("Most of us don't see this on TV," notes Tucker. "Now they have 'Reality TV.'") The struggle to rise above the indifference of their country and its government is the most heroic battle these soldiers face. As Richmond Shaw rhymes it: "To y'all it's just a show/ But we live in this movie."

GUNNER PALACE A film by Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein. A Palm Pictures release. Rated PG-13. 85 minutes. (***)
Review published in Good Times, March 24, 2005