A Farcical Lie

Rating: Null/10 (14 November 2005)

I went to see this film hoping to see something accurate if nothing else concerning modern day Marines. I spent 31 years serving the modern military, including eight with the Marines so I was looking forward to seeing it. What I saw instead is a dreadful anti-military propaganda piece depicting every type of psychotic malcontent and law breaker who ever was mistaken let into the military. This film is an open disgrace to decent men and women wearing the uniform of the United States. It is so bad it's hard to begin where to criticize without spoiling it for anyone misinformed enough to buy a ticket as I was (and I felt as though I was robbed at that). Current military people and veterans could watch this and know where to separate the childish fantasy from the minuscule bits of fact but civilians won't and that's the harm. This drivel will leave many viewers thinking this is an actual reflection of reality and it's not. It may have been marginally forgivable as a left-wing-anti-military hate piece if it had been billed as a complete work of fiction, but it isn't. It claims to be "factual".
This film bears no resemblance to any real Marines I've ever known, with the possible exception of the character played by Peter Sarsgaard as "Troy". Not too surprisingly he is a dedicated, calm sea of professionalism compared to the rest. Also not surprising is that Hollywood made his character an ex-con to discredit any positiveness he could have brought to an otherwise dismal film. The one light of accuracy, if any, are depictions of the Marines in "calmer" circumstances, training and interacting with each other. Those are remarkably realistic but they are also boring. I think that's likely where the author went astray, he tried to inject something not boring into a real story and had to resort to making it up.
Since seeing the film I went to the trouble of doing some research. It turns out that the author has been repeatedly exposed as having plagiarized some of the book, made up other parts that he claimed were real (he never saw anything close to combat, casualties or other things depicted) and stole a number of tired old barracks/urban legends and tried to foist them off as not only having been real but ones he witnessed or participated in (like the video of the one Marines wife with their neighbor - never happened). In short, a number of sources on the internet hold that he's a liar, thief and plagiarist. To top that off, some of the things he claims to have done in the book/film are actual crimes - felonies to be exact, that would earn him time in Portsmouth Naval Prison if they were true.
I think I am left feeling stunned that any organization would stoop so low as to produce such an openly inaccurate and untruthful collection of garbage as this. All of the participants in this should be ashamed of themselves.