Thanks for asking! Well, having seen neither movie, and only having this checkerboard chart summary to go by, I'd say they all pretty much miss the mark.

The problem, it seems, is that the film makers just can't wrap their arms around this elephant. Why? Well, because it's a big elephant for one. But for another reason, and that is because they are all chickens.

Yes! Chickens.

Where were all these films four years ago this month, when they might have mattered, when they might have tipped the balance of the last presidential election and stopped this goddamned madman Cheney and his meat puppet Bush?

So now, when the American public has finally stirred from their war binge and wants it to all just go away, here come those brave and gallant film makers to sell them some post traumatic Pepto Bismol for their sour stomachs.

Now they are safe to go to movie theaters and sit in the dark with some popcorn and weep about how horrible it all is/was.

Where were the film makers when it might have mattered? Tell me, goddamn it, I want to know!

Fuck them.

Years after Vietnam ended, we were treated to "The Deer Hunter" and "Apocalypse Now," two commercially successful movies that were so chickenshit that the only way they could deal with what had happened was to make them into morality tales so far removed from any experience had by Vietnam vets that our reaction was mostly disgust, and sometimes laughter, at how we were portrayed.

It's pretty easy to tell where a film maker is coming from when they set the tone of their film by focusing on two rapist-murders in the Army. There are 160 thousand of our men and women in Iraq. They are representative of our society. They could be your brother or sister, mother, daughter, son, cousin. Look into their faces and see if you see murders and rapists.

After Vietnam, there were literally dozens of derivative crap movies rushed into production to exploit the war, to mine that rich vein of drama for profit. So now comes this first batch, now that 3,800 and more of our own are dead.

If any film makers want to be honest, then make documentaries about the Iraq War, and stop looking for box office receipts and start looking for truth.

I agree with the sentiment, "where were these films when it would have mattered?"

I also agree about using extreme stories to depict the horrors of war. The real horror is in how passive we have all been, continuing to live our mundane lives while day by day our military and the people of Iraq - and elsewhere - are subjected to a life of terror and violence. Being able to depict the ongoing experience of living within that context in a way that it creeps into your psyche and insists that you stand up and stop the madness would be the best service to humankind right now.

What will haunt me for life is that we can remain so detached. It doesn't seem to matter what horrors we know are happening. We just go about our own little business of living our own relatively comfortable lives. I include myself in this. I have felt lost as to anything meaningful that I can do.

In reading my previous post, I realize that I feel shame. Personally and collectively, as a citizen of the United States.

Did this administration take advantage of our shock to implement policies that we would not otherwise have allowed, only to use our subsequent shame to keep us submissive?

Do any of you people have the slightest clue how long it takes films to get green-lighted, funded, find a distribution deal, shot, edited, released?

Any? Clue? At? All?

Even "Redacted," a cheaply made indie?

Of course they all miss the mark as the apparently psychic Garry Owen tells us.

But please, don't let ignorance about the reality of production or, you know, actually SEEING the movie, keep any of you concerned citizens from expressing your outraged opinion.

"Where were these films when it would have mattered?"

Uh, you wanted these people to make these movies in 2004? Timeline: The war begins in March 2003. The crap starts hitting the fan in small amounts in summer/fall 2003. It gets worse in 2004. In fall 2004 there is a U.S. presidential election. Bush wins. Immediately after Bush wins the military nearly destroys Fallujah, irrevocably damaging 70% of buildings and using white phosporous as a munition in violation of international law (i.e. we invaded Iraq on a false pretense of WMD, then we attacked them with WMD). Then in spring 2005 the torture at Abu Ghraib is revealed. By this time the Iraq public has learned to hate the United States military and the insurgency is out of control. By summer 2005 Dick Cheney utters his famous "last throes" comment.

So what good would a couple of movies have made? With the rah-rah jingoistic fervor overwheming the country around the time the war began, do you really think any of these films could have gotten made and distributed, let alone seen by an audience?

Keep in mind that most major Vietnam flicks did not get made for TEN YEARS after that war ended.

One of those Vietnam flicks was Brian DePalma's "Casualties of War," one of the great overlooked anti-war films of all time. DePalma has already made one powerful anti-war statement. His "Redacted" is an addendum to that. I can't wait to see it.

You should take that up with the news, Garry. That's kind of their job.

The signs of what kind of President George W. Bush would be (meaningless figurehead), and the political agenda that was to be put in place by his administration (Project for a New American Century) were on the wall in 2000. We were just too naive to see them for what they were.

It would have taken some very insightful and courageous members of the media to bring these facts to the public consciousness.

We're a nation of sheep; and worse than that, we don't even realize when we're being fleeced. Democracy requires an intelligent, well-informed, and activist populace to function "correctly." Otherwise it's just a vehicle for special interests to exploit the general public.