70
Metascore
33 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 100Christian Science MonitorDavid SterrittChristian Science MonitorDavid SterrittIlluminating, disturbing, evenhanded.
- 88Rolling StonePeter TraversRolling StonePeter TraversA riveting and indispensable record of the war in Iraq because it comes from the men who lived it.
- 80L.A. WeeklyElla TaylorL.A. WeeklyElla TaylorSensational viewing.
- 70The A.V. ClubScott TobiasThe A.V. ClubScott TobiasFor 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.
- 70VarietyTodd McCarthyVarietyTodd McCarthyPut 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.
- 70Village VoiceJ. HobermanVillage VoiceJ. HobermanFloating 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.
- 70NewsweekDavid AnsenNewsweekDavid AnsenDefies 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.
- 70Washington PostDesson ThomsonWashington PostDesson ThomsonDo 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.
- 67Entertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanEntertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanThe 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.
- 30New York Magazine (Vulture)Ken TuckerNew York Magazine (Vulture)Ken TuckerGunner Palace too often makes the grunts look like mean slackers -- precisely the opposite, one presumes, of what was intended.