In the deluge of political documentaries that preceded last year's election, few spent time with actual U.S. soldiers in Iraq, instead focusing on policy analysis or interviews with people here at home. Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein's new Gunner Palace remedies that, focusing exclusively on the men and women serving in the U.S. military in Iraq. Specifically, Tucker and Epperlein follow one battalion stationed at the titular building: a giant, opulent residence once used by Saddam Hussein's son, Uday. Although parts of it are bombed out, lavish bedrooms and ornate furnishings remain, along with a swimming pool and putting green.
The contrast of the soldiers basking in the luxury of the palace in their off-time and performing their serious, often life-threatening duties the rest of the time is an interesting one, but Tucker and Epperlein don't spend much time parsing it, instead focusing on the soldiers' day-to-day activities. They patrol their particular section of Baghdad, raid houses of suspected terrorists, miss their families and goof off, all with relatively equal enthusiasm, and Tucker and Epperlein capture it in stark, handheld digital-video footage, giving viewers a real sense of life in Baghdad.
What they don't do, however, is anything more than that. Tucker and Epperlein don't have much of a narrative sense, and Gunner Palace bounces from person to person and event to event with little in the way of unifying threads. Almost none of the soldiers portrayed in the film get enough screen time to become more than a vague sketch to the audience. The only one who does, a goofy, heavy-metal guitar player named Stuart Wilf, says plenty of silly and outrageous things but is short on introspection.
Tucker also inserts himself into the film a la Michael Moore (he even has a similarly nasal voice), but his presence is jarring and unnecessary, taking away from the film's flow. Unlike Moore, Tucker isn't an engaging and charismatic figure (we catch only one brief glimpse of him on-camera), and his personal feelings don't add to our understanding of what the soldiers deal with.
Filmmaking clumsiness aside, Gunner Palace is worthwhile viewing for how it takes a mostly objective view of the war, showing soldiers who question what they are doing as well as those who are unabashedly proud, and anti-American Iraqis along with those who welcome the Americans. Unlike Moore or some of his foes on the right, Tucker and Epperlein are pushing no agenda other than respect and support for U.S. soldiers, and that alone is worth watching.