Le long chemin du retour

We want war stories to express the paradox of war: how we hate war and how we love war; how it destroys life and affirms life's worth.

Don't look for that complexity here, though. What it offers, instead, is the conventional. If you've seen one Iraq War movie, you'll come away feeling you've already seen all this before.

These people seem incapable of doing the unexpected despite the horrific blood and violence., As they grapple with death. you get no sense of unbearable stress demolishing their façades and wrenching their guts.

It's not entirely the actors' fault, though, the way the dialogue just plods along, giving them no opening to get us inside their characters and reveal the interior.

That leaves much of the dramatic work to the annoying musical underscoring. It won't leave you alone; it's always there dictating what you're supposed to feel.

In the end, with nothing unexpected or surprising to grab you, you're left feeling you've wasted your time. .

I really can't understand all the negative reviews this series has garnered as I really enjoyed it. It's not the best acted but it depicts a true series of events and does an excellent job of showing how badly the American forces had prepared for urban warfare at that time.

Sending an open truck, without a radio and full of troops into streets of multi-storey buildings packed with well armed insurgents is obviously, in hindsight, just madness but that was what the American military did. In a similar fashion the UK sent out unarmoured Land Rover Defenders before finding out that they tended to get blown up by unscrupulous terrorists. Lessons were learned the hard way back then and the series does a good job of showing that.

Yes the "homeland" stuff is occasionally a bit cheesy but people "Get over yourselves!" and see the entire series for, overall, a relatively inexpensive good bit of TV entertainment.

I can not believe these long winded full on negative reviews.

What not enough pazazz for you??

So full of it behind their computer screens

What would get to me is the waiting...

The wives at home needing to fill the hours to distract themselves from worrying & waiting. Stuck unable to go forward or plan ahead.

The soldiers yanked along from training to suddenly they're there in the truck, waiting to leave on their first mission,...

Many a war in recent modern history i have not believed was justified, but there is no doubting the valour, bravery & selflessness of each & every soldier, engaged in conflict.

Sure the acting isn't great but take it for what it is. It's a series depicting a true event that happened to US soldiers. As a veteran myself and living just down the road from Fort Hood, I think it's crazy the nerve that these keyboard warriors on the internet have. It tells the story well. It shows the front line battles and the battles that happen back home that some shows don't touch.

I'm not sure why the hatred for this series. It leaves a little to be desired concerning backstory, but I think you get enough of it for satisfaction. The show incorporates not only, the Soldier sentiment from the front lines, but also shows what families experience on the home front--that everyone is in this fight together. It also deals with the intricacies of loyalties among those who are native-Iraqis, the struggle in deciding who to side with, and the moral issues the American troops run into, while trying to make it out alive. It also shows the human, family, and team elements common among Soldiers in wartime.

So far I have enjoyed the show. It is full of action and pretty intense gunfights, battles, comms issues (the real, military deal), the whole nine yards.

I've enjoyed the series for its entertainment value, but also for some of the realism and different aspects of what it takes for our troops on the front lines and their families as they take the long road home.