MOVIE · 2004

Gunner Palace

DocumentaryWar85 min

In Baghdad during the Iraqi insurgency, American soldiers are stationed in a bombed-out palace that has become their base, moving between long stretches of waiting and sudden bursts of danger. The film stays with them on patrol and inside the compound as they talk, joke, write music, and try to make sense of a war that keeps shifting around them. Roadside bombs, raids, and tense encounters with civilians turn ordinary routines into life-or-death decisions. Told from the troops’ first-hand point of view, Michael Tucker’s documentary focuses on the unstable, confusing reality they face each day, far from the cleaner version of war seen in nightly headlines.