First Look: "Generation Kill" On HBO

Mark your viewing calendars or set your Tivo for HBO at 9 p.m. ET on July 13, when the cabler rolls out its seven-week miniseries "Generation Kill." You may feel like yet another look at the Iraq war from inside is about the last thing you want to watch in the hazy, lazy days of summer, but this is a compelling look at the bad voodoo we sunk our men and women into over there. I've already watched three hours of the show, and as much as anything can, "Generation Kill" takes us right inside those dirty, malfunctioning, un-armored Humvees that the Maines of the First Reconaissance Battalion rode across the Kuwait border and straight into war.

The miniseries was put together by David Simon and Ed Burns, the team behind "The Wire," in collaboration with Evan Wright, a reporter who was embedded with the First Recon. His award-winning Rolling Stone articles and subsequent "Generation Kill" book are the basis of the script.This is a guy series, in part because it's about shooting and driving big trucks and blowing shit up. For better or for worse, you'll hear how Marines really talk, in combat and in the long lulls in between. (They're filthy and funny and the humor often depends on subjects like the difficulty of taking a bio break in a desert combat zone while wearing a chemical-warfare protective suit.)

Most important, you'll see what it's like to be "the tip of the spear" amid the bureaucratic and public-relations fog of modern war. Here's how real "Generation Kill" is: in this low-star-wattage production, three First Recon Marines are in the cast, one playing himself.

I'll deliver a full review just before the debut.

Comments

[Jason]

As someone who's read the book, I can't wait for this series. The book is one of the best I have ever read and the commercials I've seen seem to resonate everything that made the book great.

[CPL. Gregory]

One of the best close to the new Marines in combat books I read.