I believe at the time, when it came out, this was bombshell crazy. But now, with all the real life reality tv we have to bear around the clock this is very mild. So it's more like a vlog this is a day in my life kinda thing. Very basic nothing out of the ordinary. Sad how desensitized we've become.

Very good documentary. Very entertaining, very eye-opening, very thrilling, and maddening at times. It's very good to finally see what it was like to be a soldier during the Iraq war

I don't recommend this one. It's a difficult watch, and not very enlightening whatsoever.

I very much like the idea of this kind of soldier-journalism. What I found particularly useful is the short introduction of every soldier filming. There's the immensely patriotic Mike Moriarty, the intelligent Zack Bazzi and then there's Steve Pink. It's interesting to see how the ideology and personality of each of these soldiers colours their journalism. I liked the parts of Zack best, he's not as ignorant and influenced as other soldiers and understands the problems the army has. He's a sharp analyst. What the army needs, as Zack rightly sees, is a cultural training before being shipped off to an unknown country. When you have met the sensible and intelligent Zack, its hard to feel any sympathy for the average ignorant, patriotic American soldier, like when Moriarty and one of his friends criticizes Zack for socializing with the local people. Even though he puts his life on the line for his American home country, they still treat him as an outsider, which show their extreme ignorance and intolerance. "Today we kill Bazzi, and everyone that looks like Bazzi. That makes for a lot of targets today." Steven Pink also brightens up this documentary by his writing. He too, sees the ignorance and barbarism of his fellow soldiers. "The debate we had earlier in the day over the consistency and texture of a severed limb was not some far-off grotesque assumption. It was a genuine argument between the guy who swears it resembles hamburger, ground up but uncooked, and the guy who believes it looks more like a raw pot roast." The film features some emotionally strong and violent scenes that you would be able to see anywhere else on the mainstream media. Not for the faint of heart. Ultimately, even the ever so patriotic Moriarty begins to question the true motives for the war. Moriarty: "I feel like the priority of KBR (Burger King) making money outweighs the priority of safety." When the soldiers' deployment in Iraq ends, the film also looks at how the soldiers cope back home with the traumatic experience they went through. Hell and Back Again is a complementary must-see if you're interested in this. The strength of this documentary lies in the directness of the account of these soldiers. A great deal of the film's intellectual thought provoking strength comes from the account of Zack Bazzi. For me, he is really the one that elevated the documentary to its intellectual level, and provided the documentary makers with what they were really looking after. "I love being a soldier, the only bad thing about the army is that you can't pick your war." - Zack Bazzi

Possibly my favorite of the documentaries made about the recent conflicts in the middle east, 'The War Tapes' is unique in the fact that it has great pacing, culminating in an epic climax that will leave your heart pounding. Genuine elements of real-life pacing (without a script) are exceedingly rare and difficult to capture on film, but the 'War Tapes' does just that. And I haven't even mentioned the valuable insight into the War on Terror that this doc provides. 'The War Tapes' is truly a one-of-a-kind experience.

Best docu-drama on Iraq ever made. Completely non-biased and brilliantly made. EVERYONE needs to see this if they give a shit about what is happening to our soldiers.

Hard to listen to these guys.

Wartorn: 1861-2010, Severe Clear and Armadillo are much better considering this was good and also first hand from the frontline. But this is also a pro Bush, Cheney and Halliburton from the start, war is money and somewhat sickening.

Brutally Honest. Any person interested in the military should watch immediately.

Interesting to see the impact a deployment has three guys from Mass and their relatives. Over-dramatic and not very compelling. Armadillo and Gunner Palace are much better

Beat novelist and World War II veteran Jack Kerouac ceaselessly typed his second book onto tele-type paper taped together in one continuous scroll, such that the final product proved to be one expansive manic sentence. Thanks to the graces of his gifted editor, that sentence became On the Road, the now-classic tome on a search for identity in post-war America. Director Deborah Scranton had no less of a challenge in editing someone else's vision into the stark war narrative The War Tapes, in which she effectively communicates the incommunicable: War is a Hell that continues once the fighting has stopped. Culmed from over 700 hours of footage shot by three members of a National Guard deployment in Iraq, The War Tapes smartly forsakes a documentary format's supposed objectivity for a frank immersion into what may be one of America's darkest hours. Given a director's individual political, philosophical, and religious convictions, objectivity in documentaries proves an impossibility anyway, especially considering how awash our culture is in the subjective American media. The soldiers take notice of this and the corporate profiteers, testament to Scranton's choosing her narrators well, an astute mix of humor, pathos, courage, and, yes, hope. When Audie Murphy so wisely quipped "War is hell," there came the aspersion that heaven might also exist within the same continuum. Juxtaposing footage from the frontlines of war-torn Iraq with that of families on the homefront, The War Tapes only shows us that the same maudlin spirit seems to permeate the collective mindset-especially after the soldiers return as changed men-a telling commentary on how weary and identity-challenged our embattled society may have become. Bottom Line: A stark and frank home movie from Hell-on-Earth.

An awesome experience. It's the best movie about the Iraq War. Too real. _

As you'll hear other combat veterans say, the movie 'The Hurt Locker' is about as realistic as Sesame Street. This film is the real deal. It's gritty, grim, and glaringly gory. But this isn't a Hollywood imagining. The body parts and blood you see in this film, the dead bodies covered with flies are what soldiers go through to do their jobs. 'The War Tapes' is an amalgamation of the points of view of several soldiers given cameras with which to capture these images, so each contains a slightly different take on what's happening. I very much bonded with SGT Zach Bazzi in this film. And since he was the only one in his platoon who speaks Arabic as a native speaker, he was in the unique, if unenviable, position of acting as translator. Being of Arab extraction, he could also see the other side of the story which must have caused a lot of anguish because his fellow soldiers didn't share his perspective. He did his job very well and I'd like to say to him right now that the ceremony at which you formally became a citizen was just that, a formality. You earned your citizenship the way that very few native-born American citizens will ever have to and you earned it when the first round was fired at you, not at that ceremony which our country shamefully forced you to attend after you returned from the war. Thank you for your service. And thank you to all of the men of 'The War Tapes'. Hooah!

every person in the us should see this. fuck the news

A very realistic bitter and grungy look into the world affected by warfare, an observation that many of us will never and want to see during our life time. One of the main sucess from the film is it's amateurish level of capturing which helps preserve the flavor of authenticity.

well, typical Ieaq movie, with the families stories etc anyway, i had an headek after it, all the cam shakes, gee...

Pretty crazy shit. FUCK KBR/Halliburton

The best, and the only good docuentary to come out of the second gulf war. It is enotional that makes you think of things that you have never thought about before. The way they filmed it was like you were actually there, and the jobs that these soldiers do.....is this really what we should be fighting for....really??

A solid POV documentary about the lives of three very typical average American soldiers as they serve their terms in Iraq. Very straight forward and truthful, but I have to say, there are no real knockout memorable scenes in this film. It is a interesting documentary nonetheless that was put together well with a handful of compelling moments that will reveal a very truthful understanding of what the Americans soldiers are doing in Iraq and how they feel about the war.

A really good movie about a really horrible truth. I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy, and I'm glad as long as I don't have to be apart of it. I know people who is and I respect their choise. This is a subject not taken lightly.