A film designed in such a way to arrest your attention and your sensibilities from the outset. At the beginning, before the credits, we see a burning man, wheeling as he runs with the fire lapping and enveloping the back of his body. In this faux documentary we are then presented with a succession of talking heads of British soldiers talking about their experiences in Basra in Iraq. There are common denominators of dust and heat, and the fear of what they faced on patrol and the anticipation of this as well.
The film continually challenges points of view. The soldiers have a way of looking at you and telling you that they knew what you were thinking about their job in Iraq while they were risking their lives. The film also worked well at reminding me of how trivial my thoughts and actions seemed a lot of the time during the war.
The first soldier talks about going back to his school wearing his army uniform, after being told not to wear his uniform off duty in Britain. His visit, so dressed, had the effect of making a former teacher of his feel unsettled and made him not acknowledge his presence properly at all. As if the uniform had turned in him to a big embarrassment, or at least the perception of it. It was never mentioned but there is the implication that their experience at times was the same as that of returning troops from the Vietnam War.
This was symptomatic of the brutal honesty of the film. The soldiers talk about their feelings in such a way that they appear to be real people. They talk about their fears and their hatred, but also at times about how the army had given new opportunities. The apparent reality comes through as well with small vignettes of the soldiers home lives showing their significant others as they waited at home. These are the images that the soldiers had in their minds and shows what they were fighting for.
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