Flight Pundit

Last night I went to see this movie that has very mixed reviews. Now I know why.

It brought back memories from the desert and life of the Marines stuck in the house of Saud for months waiting, waiting, waiting, and more waiting.
I went thinking there was a story to be told, I have read Tony’s book and it was pretty good while disconnected.

For everyone the months of shear boredom was dealt with in different ways. The moon dust, MRE’s and running out of Tabasco were skipped over and that could have been where Tony’s book really had a story.

The message that seemed to come from the movie was war sucks and it ruins a lot of lives. The funny thing is most people know this already. The term shitbird come to mind when you look at Tony’s view of the Corps. We had a lot of them and they got the shit details.

Some of the good parts showed the life and times of living in a tent with a group of young guys building themselves up for a war. The early part skipped or changed a lot of the reality in the Marine Corps but showed how boot camp was still a hard place. I thought it was funny that Tony focused on getting his head slammed into the chalk board. The things that leave a mark on people is strange. Hollywood took some liberties with reality and because they didn’t have experience in the Marines it was all wrong, and easily hollywoodized. These skipped over areas that would tie the events together instead made it look like a disorganized folly.

Take these facts and step into the shoes of a shitbird and you see the movies plot (or lack of such). Remember that if a Marine is not complaining about something he is not alive. but this kind of a poor me world view of a disgruntled Marine was halfway there. While SNCO’s run the marine units there is always Jr. officers present and interacting with the squads and platoons. Most of the time we made fun of them and complained to them about any and everything.

If this review is hard to understand or follow it is because the movie was that way. It showed the good and bad of war while seemingly trying to put out a anti-war message and missing the target entirely. I laughed and remembered similar events while left with the question of why is this a movie?
To Hollywood; War Sucks, we all know that already.

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