The HBO minis­eries Gen­er­a­tion Kill comes from David Simon and Ed Burns, the mas­ter­minds behind the superla­tive series The Wire. Simon him­self is a for­mer jour­nal­ist, the state thereof being a pri­mary pre­oc­cu­pa­tion of the fifth sea­son of the The Wire. So it makes sense that he would be drawn to a war story seen through the eyes of a fel­low writer. Gen­er­a­tion Kill is based on the non­fic­tion book by Evan Wright, a Rolling Stone reporter embed­ded in the US Marine Corps 1^st Recon­nais­sance Bat­tal­ion, the first boots on the ground dur­ing the 2003 inva­sion of Iraq. Actor Lee Terge­sen plays Wright as a wide-eyed inno­cent among per­verse killers, delight­edly scrib­bling the marines’ col­or­ful boast­ings in his note­book, when not dodg­ing sniper fire. The most quotable is the manic dri­ver Cor­po­ral Josh Ray Per­son, well-cast as James Ran­sone, basi­cally repris­ing his char­ac­ter Ziggy Sobotka from The Wire sea­son two.

The marines’ lingo flashes back to pop cul­ture circa 2003, which already seems so very far away. A rumor spreads that J-Lo is dead, remind­ing us of the brief period when Jen­nifer Lopez was the most desired woman on the planet. Everyone’s a “dog” or “bra” (not as in the under­gar­ment but as in “bro”). In between har­row­ing bat­tles (which the war­riors long for but hate when they arrive), much of their expe­ri­ence is com­prised of long stretches of bore­dom. They sup­ply their own sound­track, rec­ol­lect­ing what lyrics they can and recre­at­ing every part of a song a cap­pella with great enthusiasm.

Cpl. Josh Ray Per­son: “When my band opened up for Limp Bizkit in Kansas City, we fuck­ing sucked. But then again, so did they. The only dif­fer­ence is that they became famous and I became a marine.”

After exhaust­ing the con­ver­sa­tional value of their bowel move­ments and each other’s alleged sex­ual ori­en­ta­tions, there’s noth­ing but time to talk about the ori­gins and moti­va­tions of the war. One pop­u­lar the­ory is that it is a noth­ing but another race war. As one sol­dier puts it, it’s “White man’s des­tiny to rule the world” and “White man won’t be denied.” Or is it to clear the ground for more Star­bucks fran­chises? Or maybe it’s a war over the scarcest resource of all: virgins.

Marines are trained to deper­son­al­ize and vil­ify the enemy, all with the aim of being effec­tive killers. So they are essen­tially ill-equipped for a 21^st cen­tury war in which they are expected to request per­mis­sion before engag­ing any tar­get, and for sit­u­a­tions in which they must deal diplo­mat­i­cally with the civil­ian pop­u­la­tion — some of which may be threats in dis­guise, but most often are just peo­ple who either need their help or would rather they just leave. When the marines do wish to offer com­pas­sion, they are thwarted by their com­mand or by cold hard real­ity — often­times there’s noth­ing they can do. They’re also fatally under­equipped in a lit­eral sense: they’re issued less body armor than Wright was able to pur­chase on eBay, they have state-of-the-art nightvi­sion gog­gles but no bat­ter­ies, and as if they didn’t stand out enough, they’re clad in the wrong cam­ou­flage style. They sub­sist on only one M.R.E. (Meal, Ready to Eat) each day, sup­ple­mented with copi­ous caf­feine pills, Skit­tles, Hus­tler, and Skoal. But as one marine quips, “Sem­per Gumby — always flex­i­ble.” As char­ac­ter­ized here, these Marines never miss an oppor­tu­nity to bitch, but pride them­selves on being able to “make do.”

Lt. Col. Stephen ‘God­fa­ther’ Fer­rando: “What’s fore­most in Godfather’s mind? We’re still very much in the game, gentlemen.”

Aside from the frus­trat­ingly elu­sive Iraqi army or sui­cide bombers, there are few antag­o­nists marines hate more than Reservists, the Army, and their own incom­pe­tent com­mand. But they grad­u­ally learn that their supe­ri­ors are often far wiser than they real­ized. Lieu­tenant Colonel Stephen “God­fa­ther” Fer­rando (Chance Kelly) (so nick­named because of a hoarse voice derived from lung can­cer) nearly causes a mutiny by refus­ing to aid a fatally injured Iraqi boy. In a rare def­er­ence from a man that has no need to explain him­self to his sub­or­di­nates, he explains in detail why he made his deci­sion: it was lit­er­ally impos­si­ble to save the boy. Later, he reveals to the reporter that he is always fully con­scious of inef­fec­tive com­man­ders like the grossly incom­pe­tent Cap­tain Dave McGraw (Eric Nen­ninger), known to his detrac­tors as “Cap­tain Amer­ica.” God­fa­ther can’t always act on every sin­gle infrac­tion, lest polic­ing his peo­ple become his entire role in the mil­i­tary machine. Even the rep­re­hen­si­ble Sergeant Major John Sixta (Neal Jones) turns out to be more canny than any­one sus­pected; he knows his job is to make him­self into a car­toon vil­lain against which the men can direct their frus­tra­tions. His role is part of the time-tested marine tra­di­tion: a morale-building fig­ure. And for audi­ences of this series, a bit of comic relief (“That hel­met is the prop­pity of the Yoo-Ess-of-Ay!”).

I found the series to be dis­ap­point­ingly frac­tured, no rival at all to Simon and Burns’ mas­ter­piece the Wire. Only the sub­lime final scene rises to the vaulted heights The Wire reg­u­larly reached. One marine had spent weeks shoot­ing and edit­ing a home movie of the inva­sion. When the com­pany finally reaches Bagh­dad, they find they lit­er­ally can­not watch the com­pleted movie. Each walks away, in silence, one by one. In the tra­di­tion of The Wire, this clos­ing mon­tage is set to a per­fectly cho­sen piece of music (Johnny Cash’s apoc­a­lyp­tic “When the Man Comes Around”) and sends shiv­ers down the spine.

Offi­cial site: www.hbo.com/generationkill

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