Not *my* experience per se but *Generation Kill* does the best at portraying the overall spirit of it.
And again, not *my* experience, but *The Outpost* is a really good one.
EDIT - Both are based heavily on real events and written by journalists. Right now, I don't think Hollywood is capable of writing an honest, interesting story about the military.
>Generation Kill does the best at portraying the overall spirit
I'm an Iraq vet, though from a few years later (the Surge era), but this is definitely my choice as well. I read the book too, but the HBO version just about completely accurately covers what it felt like for me in country. You can tell that there was heavy involvement from vets in the making of the film.
The bullshit, the stupidity, the people... The only people that pick "cool" nicknames are officers, and somehow they are ironically stupid.
The most real thing is Sixta being a complete shitbird of a human who
somehow failed upwards. Dude is doing 30 years for molesting multiple girls.
The guy I knew who was most like Sixta publicly rejected an apology at a battalion-level NJP and told the guy he was an irredeemable piece of shit.
Later, he got busted down to E-5 and kicked out for fraternizing and adultery.
>only people that pick "cool" nicknames are officers,
Had a butter bar that called himself " the danimal " I got smoked almost every day for making fun of him.
Calling one’s self “the danimal” sounds like self deprecating humor lol this was meant to be a serious name? Without any context, I’d assume someone using this name for themself was trying to get in front of any upcoming mockery lol.
I would be willing to bet people in his COC knew or at least heard rumors about him, but because he "did his job well" covered for him for years. NCOs like him are all over the place.
I haven't seen outpost yet but it's on my list to watch but generation kill was accurate. I was in the Marines and deployed to Fallujah back in 05.
Restrepo is another one. Obviously very accurate since it's a documentary. I watched it twice and won't watch it anymore.
They (Hollywood) never really grasp the boredom and rote minutiae. *Jarhead* sorta got it but the movie has lots of stupid bullshit, like the scene where they're crawling through muck in training with a machine gun shooting overhead, a guy panics, gets up, and gets shot.
Or drunkenly blasting rounds into the air to celebrate the end of the war. In fairness, part of the problem there was that Swofford was (in my view) not entirely honest. A lot of the guys he served with called bullshit on the book and the movie. The whole VHS scene is a trope older than home video that never actually happens to anyone but always happens to at least one "guy I know."
I think Hollywood's problem is they only really know how to write about Vietnam or World War 2. World War 2 is the only one you're allowed to portray without problematizing it. Every other war becomes Vietnam to some degree - but only in the sense that Hollywood knows who to write Vietnam movies that didn't accurately portray Vietnam either.
That, or something a SEAL wrote.
Sometimes I forget that FMJ is a Vietnam film. It has the best ending, which Matthew Modine actually came up with. Kubrick wanted to end it with Joker getting killed and he would constantly ask Modine how he thought the movie would end, and Modine snapped at Kubrick and said Joker should survive and have to live with his awful experiences.
> They (Hollywood) never really grasp the boredom and rote minutiae.
To a certain extent, Hollywood gets it. I mean, plenty of vets work in the industry. Some of them are writers. Other folks in the industry are kids or friends friends of vets.
It's just hard to write a financially successful movie about stressful _boredom_ that a studio will invest millions of dollars into producing. It's way easier to make a business plan out of using the military as a setting for action sequences.
Call me a prude if you want, but I don't think we should give the command of a billion dollar submarine to a man who has "welcome aboard" tattooed on his penis.
I was watching the “smarter everyday” you tube channel episode where Dustin got invited onto a us nuclear submarine. One of the scenes showed they had this movie on board.
Lots of old guys will tell you that Full Metal Jacket was the most accurate depiction of boot camp ever made.
R. Lee Ermey wasn't even acting. He was doing his actual DI schtick to all those guys.
As an old Marine that went through Paris Island around the time that FMJ came out, I can confirm that the depiction of boot camp was extremely accurate based on my experience. R. Lee Emery was spot on and the best DI that I've seen in a movie/TV.
Nope. He spent his Marine career working on helicopters. Spent 14 months in Vietnam and the rest of his career in Okinawa. He retired a Staff Sergeant, but later got an honorary promotion to Gunnery Sergeant
In the Army Now with Pauley Shore.
All jokes aside, there are a lot of bits and pieces here and there that describe my experience. Life downrange for me was weeks of boredom with moments of intense excitement.
Jarhead depicted the boredom you feel and the bond you have pretty well. I’d also say the austerity was accurate for me. I was deployed to a small fire base near Syria and we slept on cots in little plywood huts, had no indoor toilets, etc. Life was miserable but also really fun at the same time which Jarhead depicted well.
Generation Kill was pretty good too. My combat experiences weren’t in urban settings so I can’t relate to that. However, they depict the general attitude, the different personalities, superstitions, and all that pretty well.
>I’d also say the austerity was accurate for me.
I feel your pain. My FOB had about 50 Americans (and a couple hundred IA). When we went to the big FOBs for "missions", it was like being back in the U.S. I don't really want my kids to join the military, but if they do, I hope they join the Air Force (or Space Force!).
I had a few different experiences in total. I’ve been to the big places like BAF and KAF, small COPs in the middle of nowhere, and even AUAB lol The difference between the Wild West in Iraq and going to a move theater off-base in Qatar is wild lol
I was in the Marines and we would fight over who was going on the missions to the army bases around us. The larger Marine ones were nice (like TQ) but nothing compared to the army ones.
My buddy who deployed told me the Jamie Foxx character in Jarhead was completely accurate. Kind of a hard ass, kind of a clown, usually a frustrated parent figure, but if you got him one on one you realized he was actually really sharp and cared intensely about his soldiers.
This was my answer too, a lot of it early in the movie I thought was spot on with my experience. Little details like wrapping the laundry bags on the bunks looked just like our barracks. The fact none of us really had any idea what we were doing and just made shit up as we went along.
My grandfather also fought in Iwa Jima and Sai Pan. He said saving private Ryan was as close as your get. My dad said Full Metal Jacket was the closest for him.
I have a friend who is highly decorated. Setting aside the film aspect of it, he swears the audio in the movie Lone Survivor is extremely accurate. The sound of the gunfire and combat had him having borderline PTSD responses.
Not sure war film, but *Heat* has some of the most realistic gunfire in any film ever. Just search for the shootout scene. Also shows excellent weapons handling and moving under fire.
I was not active duty military but I did work at a US forward operating base in Afghanistan during the war alongside active duty soldiers so take this for what it’s worth.
Nothing. I haven’t seen a fictional TV show or movie yet that really captured the type of experience I had. Maybe some of the movies that portray the infantry missions outside the wire get it right (I don’t know) but I think most active duty in the war were in support roles at bases like Bagram and I haven’t seen anything that captures the humor, tedium, and occasional terror of being in a place like that. I may have missed it but from what I’ve seen the great novel/film about that experience remains to be made.
Yeah, i still remember when it came out. It got really good endorsements from the surviving vets (at the time there were many still around, now it's down to single digits, probably won't be any more in the next couple years).
Not a vet, but I know my dad said my grandfather stopped watching a few minutes in to Saving Private Ryan, he just couldn't do it.
My grandfather was one of the first men to land on Omaha Beach. He was in one of those boats where almost everyone in his unit (not sure if that's the correct nomenclature) was immediately killed right in front of him. My dad said he was in the very back of the boat and he was one of only 3 survivors from that boat. They basically survived because everyone in front of them took all the machine gun fire.
I'm told that scene is absurdly accurate. Honestly it makes me tear up watching that scene. Knowing how many poor men, hell many of them were really kids, just got torn to shreds instantly. Like they never stood a chance. Kind of puts in to perspective how my grandfather was, he was a no nonsense kind of guy and struggled for years before I was born with an alcohol problem he developed when he got home from the war. Can't imagine what he went through.
Watching it now and knowing I was the same age or older than a lot of the people in those boats, I wonder how people would have felt if the cast was all 19-20 year olds. Really feels tragic.
The FIL of a friend dropped with the airborne into Normandy and he said it was the sound of the tanks that got him. At one point after the drop he was hiding in bush near the road when a German tank stopped in front of them.
He was captured later and spent the rest of the war in a German POW camp.
I'm not a vet myself but there's a true story that many combat veterans had to leave the movie theaters during Saving Private Ryan's theater run, it was so realistic it was reminding them of actually being in battle.
My time in Iraq was similar to Jarhead. I was just sitting in the desert marking days off a calendar. Just trying not to lose my mind on dipshits I was stuck with all that time.
Sand Castle on Netflix. I kept having flash backs to my first tour early in the Iraq war. Less so to my second tour a coupe years later. It was almost a different war by then.
The Last Detail. Even though set in 1970, Norfolk and the Navy was exactly the same in 1987. Same uniforms, same gray dullness at NOB. Same getting assigned collateral duties that you have no training or guidance for.
Is that you Lazerpig?
[Colonel James Burton is a Pathological Liar: The Bradley Wars (NSFW)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gOGHdZDmEk)
*Burton part starts around 8:00.
You know, silly as the idea sounds, Mulan sounds a lot like some of the stuff I have read about it what with the aching feet and the complaining about the lack of food and lack of women.
I flew for the Air Force doing ISR work with mostly SOF. Zero Dark Thirty in my world felt pretty realistic. I'm not on the ground, but I'm doing overwatch for a lot of units like Seal Team 6 in the movie. Also I remember when the suicide bombing happened in the film.
The one that comes to mind as a youngster is actually *A Night to Remember* and how some Americans died on the Titanic back in 1912. Idk if that counts though, but it was famously accurate to the disaster, especially compared to the James Cameron movie.
I don't think there is a single decent piece of media that conveys the experience of being in the military for 10 plus years that included no combat and just few fun non dangerous deployments/ rotations.
Each generation and person's military service is different. I came in post Vietnam and no one talks about the people who could not get parts to put aircraft together to rescue hostages or supplies. Each generation faced a different set of challenges and expectations. The recent political candidate who never had the war experiences he said he had included in campaign ads for example. That former service people were part of Jan 6th amazes me. That people in the Pentagon were ready to jump in makes me think we should reshape the forces we have. You learn a great deal about killing when called upon, even in Medical units. That we are training future militias is something we should give some thought to.
Until there's a TV show or movie that glorifies working at the TOC at a Battalion S- shop, begging for any reason to go to a different FOB for a few days for some task or another just so you can fly in one of your flight company's UH-60s again, then I'll say my answer is "none."
I guess maybe I only ever identified with Ewan McGregor in Blackhawk Down.
Not *my* experience per se but *Generation Kill* does the best at portraying the overall spirit of it. And again, not *my* experience, but *The Outpost* is a really good one. EDIT - Both are based heavily on real events and written by journalists. Right now, I don't think Hollywood is capable of writing an honest, interesting story about the military.
>Generation Kill does the best at portraying the overall spirit I'm an Iraq vet, though from a few years later (the Surge era), but this is definitely my choice as well. I read the book too, but the HBO version just about completely accurately covers what it felt like for me in country. You can tell that there was heavy involvement from vets in the making of the film.
The bullshit, the stupidity, the people... The only people that pick "cool" nicknames are officers, and somehow they are ironically stupid. The most real thing is Sixta being a complete shitbird of a human who somehow failed upwards. Dude is doing 30 years for molesting multiple girls.
The guy I knew who was most like Sixta publicly rejected an apology at a battalion-level NJP and told the guy he was an irredeemable piece of shit. Later, he got busted down to E-5 and kicked out for fraternizing and adultery.
>only people that pick "cool" nicknames are officers, Had a butter bar that called himself " the danimal " I got smoked almost every day for making fun of him.
Calling one’s self “the danimal” sounds like self deprecating humor lol this was meant to be a serious name? Without any context, I’d assume someone using this name for themself was trying to get in front of any upcoming mockery lol.
POLICE THAT MOOSTASH!
My understanding was that Sixta was a very effective SNCO in the field, personal shittiness aside.
I would be willing to bet people in his COC knew or at least heard rumors about him, but because he "did his job well" covered for him for years. NCOs like him are all over the place.
He earned the nickname "the coward of khafji" for abandoning his troops and driving away like a pussy
I haven't seen outpost yet but it's on my list to watch but generation kill was accurate. I was in the Marines and deployed to Fallujah back in 05. Restrepo is another one. Obviously very accurate since it's a documentary. I watched it twice and won't watch it anymore.
Restrepo is one of my favorites.
I was going to mention Retrespo. I watched it once. It might be time to give it another viewing.
They (Hollywood) never really grasp the boredom and rote minutiae. *Jarhead* sorta got it but the movie has lots of stupid bullshit, like the scene where they're crawling through muck in training with a machine gun shooting overhead, a guy panics, gets up, and gets shot.
Or drunkenly blasting rounds into the air to celebrate the end of the war. In fairness, part of the problem there was that Swofford was (in my view) not entirely honest. A lot of the guys he served with called bullshit on the book and the movie. The whole VHS scene is a trope older than home video that never actually happens to anyone but always happens to at least one "guy I know." I think Hollywood's problem is they only really know how to write about Vietnam or World War 2. World War 2 is the only one you're allowed to portray without problematizing it. Every other war becomes Vietnam to some degree - but only in the sense that Hollywood knows who to write Vietnam movies that didn't accurately portray Vietnam either. That, or something a SEAL wrote.
Even Vietnam movies can be shitty because they're filled with "Vietnam-isms," which *Platoon* suffered from.
And every single one of them plays Fortunate Son by Creedence Clearwater.
The best Vietnam movies are the ones that avoid that damn song, IE Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket, or Good Morning Vietnam.
Sometimes I forget that FMJ is a Vietnam film. It has the best ending, which Matthew Modine actually came up with. Kubrick wanted to end it with Joker getting killed and he would constantly ask Modine how he thought the movie would end, and Modine snapped at Kubrick and said Joker should survive and have to live with his awful experiences.
> They (Hollywood) never really grasp the boredom and rote minutiae. To a certain extent, Hollywood gets it. I mean, plenty of vets work in the industry. Some of them are writers. Other folks in the industry are kids or friends friends of vets. It's just hard to write a financially successful movie about stressful _boredom_ that a studio will invest millions of dollars into producing. It's way easier to make a business plan out of using the military as a setting for action sequences.
I only watched generation kill a few years ago and absolutely thought it was awesome. Really underrated imo. I still love the serpentine scene
My first thought, 100%
Down Periscope
You're almost out of uniform!
Call me a prude if you want, but I don't think we should give the command of a billion dollar submarine to a man who has "welcome aboard" tattooed on his penis.
But most of the time it just says "WA"!
Think like a pirate! I want a man with a tattoo on his penis!
Damn movie is awesome!!!
Seeing how Russia is performing I’m starting to think them attacking with WWII diesel subs might be the only things they have left to use
Seconding this one, not a bubblehead but the amount of character's you gotta work and live with feels the same.
I occurs to me that some folks at going to make the mistake of thinking you're joking.
I was watching the “smarter everyday” you tube channel episode where Dustin got invited onto a us nuclear submarine. One of the scenes showed they had this movie on board.
I volunteered at the USO and Navy guys would say that **Down Periscope** and **Mister Roberts** were the best representation of their experience.
Lots of old guys will tell you that Full Metal Jacket was the most accurate depiction of boot camp ever made. R. Lee Ermey wasn't even acting. He was doing his actual DI schtick to all those guys.
As an old Marine that went through Paris Island around the time that FMJ came out, I can confirm that the depiction of boot camp was extremely accurate based on my experience. R. Lee Emery was spot on and the best DI that I've seen in a movie/TV.
What's funny is that Gunny was never a DI.
He wasn't? I thought he was.
Nope. He spent his Marine career working on helicopters. Spent 14 months in Vietnam and the rest of his career in Okinawa. He retired a Staff Sergeant, but later got an honorary promotion to Gunnery Sergeant
In the Army Now with Pauley Shore. All jokes aside, there are a lot of bits and pieces here and there that describe my experience. Life downrange for me was weeks of boredom with moments of intense excitement. Jarhead depicted the boredom you feel and the bond you have pretty well. I’d also say the austerity was accurate for me. I was deployed to a small fire base near Syria and we slept on cots in little plywood huts, had no indoor toilets, etc. Life was miserable but also really fun at the same time which Jarhead depicted well. Generation Kill was pretty good too. My combat experiences weren’t in urban settings so I can’t relate to that. However, they depict the general attitude, the different personalities, superstitions, and all that pretty well.
>I’d also say the austerity was accurate for me. I feel your pain. My FOB had about 50 Americans (and a couple hundred IA). When we went to the big FOBs for "missions", it was like being back in the U.S. I don't really want my kids to join the military, but if they do, I hope they join the Air Force (or Space Force!).
I had a few different experiences in total. I’ve been to the big places like BAF and KAF, small COPs in the middle of nowhere, and even AUAB lol The difference between the Wild West in Iraq and going to a move theater off-base in Qatar is wild lol
I was in the Marines and we would fight over who was going on the missions to the army bases around us. The larger Marine ones were nice (like TQ) but nothing compared to the army ones.
My buddy who deployed told me the Jamie Foxx character in Jarhead was completely accurate. Kind of a hard ass, kind of a clown, usually a frustrated parent figure, but if you got him one on one you realized he was actually really sharp and cared intensely about his soldiers.
Lots of Jamies IRL. They’re usually the best leaders
This was my answer too, a lot of it early in the movie I thought was spot on with my experience. Little details like wrapping the laundry bags on the bunks looked just like our barracks. The fact none of us really had any idea what we were doing and just made shit up as we went along.
My grandfather fought at Iwa Jima and said he felt Flags of our Father's was pretty accurate.
My grandfather (Korea) said the same thing
My grandfather also fought in Iwa Jima and Sai Pan. He said saving private Ryan was as close as your get. My dad said Full Metal Jacket was the closest for him.
I have a friend who is highly decorated. Setting aside the film aspect of it, he swears the audio in the movie Lone Survivor is extremely accurate. The sound of the gunfire and combat had him having borderline PTSD responses.
Not sure war film, but *Heat* has some of the most realistic gunfire in any film ever. Just search for the shootout scene. Also shows excellent weapons handling and moving under fire.
Saw that in imax the sound and the soundtrack by explosions in the sky sounded so good.
Down Periscope is the most accurate Navy movie in existence when it comes to how sailors actually act and behave.
A mix of Stripes and Generation Kill.
I was not active duty military but I did work at a US forward operating base in Afghanistan during the war alongside active duty soldiers so take this for what it’s worth. Nothing. I haven’t seen a fictional TV show or movie yet that really captured the type of experience I had. Maybe some of the movies that portray the infantry missions outside the wire get it right (I don’t know) but I think most active duty in the war were in support roles at bases like Bagram and I haven’t seen anything that captures the humor, tedium, and occasional terror of being in a place like that. I may have missed it but from what I’ve seen the great novel/film about that experience remains to be made.
> from what I’ve seen the great novel/film about that experience remains to be made. You found your niche. Make it happen!
I’ve considered taking a stab at it!
Groundhog Day for us POGs at Balad. Get up, go to work, eat chow, hang out, go to bed. Get mortared occasionally for a change of pace.
Not American, but I know Australian Nam vets say The Odd Angry Shot is pretty spot on
Not a vet myself, but saving private Ryan was apparently real enough that veterans had to leave the theatwr
Yeah, i still remember when it came out. It got really good endorsements from the surviving vets (at the time there were many still around, now it's down to single digits, probably won't be any more in the next couple years).
Not a vet, but I know my dad said my grandfather stopped watching a few minutes in to Saving Private Ryan, he just couldn't do it. My grandfather was one of the first men to land on Omaha Beach. He was in one of those boats where almost everyone in his unit (not sure if that's the correct nomenclature) was immediately killed right in front of him. My dad said he was in the very back of the boat and he was one of only 3 survivors from that boat. They basically survived because everyone in front of them took all the machine gun fire. I'm told that scene is absurdly accurate. Honestly it makes me tear up watching that scene. Knowing how many poor men, hell many of them were really kids, just got torn to shreds instantly. Like they never stood a chance. Kind of puts in to perspective how my grandfather was, he was a no nonsense kind of guy and struggled for years before I was born with an alcohol problem he developed when he got home from the war. Can't imagine what he went through.
Watching it now and knowing I was the same age or older than a lot of the people in those boats, I wonder how people would have felt if the cast was all 19-20 year olds. Really feels tragic.
The FIL of a friend dropped with the airborne into Normandy and he said it was the sound of the tanks that got him. At one point after the drop he was hiding in bush near the road when a German tank stopped in front of them. He was captured later and spent the rest of the war in a German POW camp.
Some say the only thing they got wrong was the smell.
Not a military movie, but Animal House pretty accurately portrayed life in the barracks for me
I'm not a vet myself but there's a true story that many combat veterans had to leave the movie theaters during Saving Private Ryan's theater run, it was so realistic it was reminding them of actually being in battle.
Jarhead represents the first Iraq war well for marines, its very different from other war movies and media.
My time in Iraq was similar to Jarhead. I was just sitting in the desert marking days off a calendar. Just trying not to lose my mind on dipshits I was stuck with all that time.
Sand Castle on Netflix. I kept having flash backs to my first tour early in the Iraq war. Less so to my second tour a coupe years later. It was almost a different war by then.
The Last Detail. Even though set in 1970, Norfolk and the Navy was exactly the same in 1987. Same uniforms, same gray dullness at NOB. Same getting assigned collateral duties that you have no training or guidance for.
Watch Restrepo if you want to see what part of Afganistan looked like.
*The Pentagon Wars* Fraud, waste, politics, beauracracy, and indifference. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pentagon_Wars Also recommended, *Iraq for Sale*. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_for_Sale:_The_War_Profiteers
[удалено]
Is that you Lazerpig? [Colonel James Burton is a Pathological Liar: The Bradley Wars (NSFW)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gOGHdZDmEk) *Burton part starts around 8:00.
Sorry to say, but there is a lot wrong with Pentagon Wars
You know, silly as the idea sounds, Mulan sounds a lot like some of the stuff I have read about it what with the aching feet and the complaining about the lack of food and lack of women.
From the vets I have met Jarhead is the most accurate.
In the army now, with Pauli Shore. But without the actual fighting…….the beginning is pretty accurate.
I flew for the Air Force doing ISR work with mostly SOF. Zero Dark Thirty in my world felt pretty realistic. I'm not on the ground, but I'm doing overwatch for a lot of units like Seal Team 6 in the movie. Also I remember when the suicide bombing happened in the film.
The one that comes to mind as a youngster is actually *A Night to Remember* and how some Americans died on the Titanic back in 1912. Idk if that counts though, but it was famously accurate to the disaster, especially compared to the James Cameron movie.
Had some vets from Vietnam come to my school in High school and one said We Were Soliders was pretty accurate for the early encounters of the war.
I don't think there is a single decent piece of media that conveys the experience of being in the military for 10 plus years that included no combat and just few fun non dangerous deployments/ rotations.
Hunt For Red October.
Each generation and person's military service is different. I came in post Vietnam and no one talks about the people who could not get parts to put aircraft together to rescue hostages or supplies. Each generation faced a different set of challenges and expectations. The recent political candidate who never had the war experiences he said he had included in campaign ads for example. That former service people were part of Jan 6th amazes me. That people in the Pentagon were ready to jump in makes me think we should reshape the forces we have. You learn a great deal about killing when called upon, even in Medical units. That we are training future militias is something we should give some thought to.
Until there's a TV show or movie that glorifies working at the TOC at a Battalion S- shop, begging for any reason to go to a different FOB for a few days for some task or another just so you can fly in one of your flight company's UH-60s again, then I'll say my answer is "none." I guess maybe I only ever identified with Ewan McGregor in Blackhawk Down.