Gunner Palace does not try to suggest our soldiers are not heroes, and perhaps their heroism is evinced in their calm, unfazed behavior. When asked if they ever take attacks personally, an officer explains that doing so would only make them less effective. They are definitely not cavalier, but we are struck by the demeanor of the soldiers, which is that of men and women only there to do a job. And I don't mean cool affectation or restrained bravado (though Tucker's approach is all about restraint); there's really no hint that they desire glory or citation.

Tucker chooses a number of different soldiers to follow and we get to know them as the film advances, seeing them as they go through their routines. It's alarming when they describe how some Iraqis welcome and others despise them. How a group of adoring Iraqi children might include an assassin or insurrectionist. And while they don't like the hostility and ambivalence of the Iraqi people they take it in stride. They never seem enraged or overwhelmed even though they are surrounded 24/7 by imminent danger. They're very comfortable with their feelings.

As with many competent, compelling documentary filmmakers, Tucker probably got a leg up by living with the soldiers, facilitating their spontaneity and comfort. By making them seem ordinary, he ratchets up their eloquence without plucking at our heartstrings the way Capra might have. En route to an attack, Wagner's Flight of the Valkyries plays, in wry contrast to the exhilarating helicopter formation in Coppola's Apocalypse Now. No aggression or megalomania here.

Time Magazine honors them as "Persons of the Year" but the awards are in some cases posthumous. When "characters" we've become attached to die, it's sorrowful because we never see the reactions of others. Their deaths are diminished by the distortion of protocol and media spin. When a couple of the soldiers, without a trace of passion or pontification are unwilling to justify the taking of another human being's life, when one of them says, he can't think of a single time in history when anything good was accomplished by one person killing another, the effect, in its quiet way, is stunning.