Gunner Palace
Palm Pictures | Release Date: March 4, 2005 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
70
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 33 Critic Reviews
Positive:
26
Mixed:
6
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Christian Science MonitorDavid Sterritt
Illuminating, disturbing, evenhanded. Read full review
100
Chicago ReaderJ.R. Jones
At the very least, it's more honest and involved in its portraiture of American soldiers in Iraq than anything TV news of any political persuasion has given us. Read full review
90
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
Rousing, provocative film.
90
SalonAndrew O'Hehir
A nerve-jangling work of visual poetry and ironic juxtaposition, and a powerful human story of a group of brave young Americans. Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter Travers
A riveting and indispensable record of the war in Iraq because it comes from the men who lived it. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
A ground-level documentary, messy and immediate, about the daily life of a combat soldier in Iraq. It is not pro-war or anti-war. Read full review
83
Seattle Post-IntelligencerSean Axmaker
The ironies and contradictions that give the first half a dark humor give way to gravity and respect as soldiers are killed (off camera). Read full review
80
L.A. WeeklyElla Taylor
Sensational viewing. Read full review
80
The New York TimesDana Stevens
The resulting film is an unruly, riveting assemblage of anecdotes and impressions. The larger political and military questions about the war in Iraq are kept deliberately in the background, which some viewers may find frustrating. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
A striking new documentary that shows the war in a way it's not been seen before: from the ground up. Read full review
80
Washington PostStephen Hunter
The film is more of an anthropological essay on the way young Americans relate while they make war, not love, and try to survive in the meantime. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
The best glimpse yet of what it's like to be in Iraq. Read full review
75
Miami HeraldRene Rodriguez
In a simple, direct manner, Gunner Palace reminds you that the thousands of faceless, nameless troops in Iraq are still there after you switch off CNN. Read full review
75
Portland OregonianShawn Levy
Gets behind the armor and the camouflage to give viewers a clear if brief view of the men and women who fight and die under the American flag every day in Iraq. Read full review
75
Philadelphia InquirerSteven Rea
Despite the jumpy, ride-along camera work and the ever-present threat of engagement, a certain tedium sets in during the film. Read full review
70
The A.V. ClubScott Tobias
For the soldiers, it's about living to see the next day and living with the things they see, and Gunner Palace honors their perspective like no other Iraq documentary has to date. Read full review
70
VarietyTodd McCarthy
Put together by Tucker and his co-director/editor wife Petra Epperlein without a hint of artifice, docu offers up its sounds and images bluntly, and they are very much sounds and images worth having as part of the record. Read full review
70
Village VoiceJ. Hoberman
Floating on the surface of confusion, Gunner Palace has a raw home video quality that's often quite beautiful. Much of the movie is hardly more than an immersion in sights and sounds. Vivid as it is, Gunner Palace is dominated by what isn't shown. It's the human face of Abu Ghraib. Read full review
70
NewsweekDavid Ansen
Defies any expectations you bring to it. There are sights in Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein's eye-opening documentary that will confirm and confound both right and left. Read full review
70
Washington PostDesson Thomson
Do these soldiers make it? We keep watching and waiting. There's not much more to Gunner Palace than that, but it's no different than the soldiers' lot. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterFrank Scheck
A lack of artful filmmaking doesn't detract from the dramatic impact of this fly-on-the-wall, cinema verite documentary. Read full review
70
Dallas ObserverLuke Y. Thompson
Why don't we see this kind of thing on the news every night? Undoubtedly military censorship comes into play, but probably more so it's the prevailing notion that talking-head shoutfests stacked with pundits bring in the ratings, while actual field reporting costs more money. Read full review
67
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
The film's fragmentary structure, though, is suspect. It says that the soldiers find no real meaning in their combat actions, yet Gunner Palace presents the operations we're seeing in so little context, reducing them to a random hash of ''sensational'' moments, that Tucker at times appears to be exploiting the war to create a didactic canvas of manic military unease. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleKimberley Jones
With so many soldiers interviewed, some only fleetingly, it's impossible to keep track of them all. Read full review
63
New York Daily NewsJack Mathews
Provides an intimate, nonpoliticized, uncensored and totally unappealing look at the lives of U.S. soldiers serving during a grim and uncertain period of insurgency. Read full review
63
Boston GlobeWesley Morris
Works purely as a series of complex snapshots of the conflict in Iraq. Read full review
50
TV Guide MagazineKen Fox
But good intentions aside, Tucker and codirector Petra Epperlein only further confuse the issue: Their rap-video stylings and use of non-source music create the impression that you're watching characters trapped in a Tom Clancy Xbox game. Read full review
50
New York PostKyle Smith
At its best, the film just sits back and lets the weird times roll. Read full review
50
Chicago TribuneAllison Benedikt
Tucker has done a bang-up job, distancing and hypnotizing us with his frenzied, fragmented, sexy images. But war isn't a video game. Read full review
50
The New RepublicStanley Kauffmann
The picture is too long. It repeats and repeats. Thirty minutes, instead of its eighty-six, could have told us all we need to know about the danger and tedium of these lives. Read full review
50
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
Although the acclaimed documentary Gunner Palace contains some electrifying vignettes of the Iraq war, its jaggedly elliptical and hopped-up style lands it in a limbo between ragged and slick. Read full review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick Groen
Sorry, but this level of insight is readily available from daily news reports. Read full review
30
New York Magazine (Vulture)Ken Tucker
Gunner Palace too often makes the grunts look like mean slackers -- precisely the opposite, one presumes, of what was intended. Read full review
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