This docudrama type movie is about life in an American bomb squad in Iraq. As men diffuse IEDs they face the hardships of war. Its premise is listed in a quote at the beginning of the film saying “war is a drug.” The movie then follows a team of soldiers led by a wild man individualist Texan who lives on the edge of danger in defusing bombs. Half of the fighting is justified and half of it is confused delusion, as the lead wild man gets them into trouble with his “cowboy” antics. I think it is ultimately an anti-war film because at the end, the lead character cannot go back and live with his family. He tells his little daughter that as you get older you love fewer and fewer things, until you only love one thing. And we see that he doesn’t fit into the “insane” consumerist America of a thousand cereal choices in the supermarket (Is this what we fight for?). And we see he cannot connect with his wife or daughter anymore, and after saying that statement that you only love one thing, we see him back on another tour willingly. So according to this movie, being a soldier destroys your ability to connect with the humanity of family and turns you into a machine that can only relate to one thing: war.
