“I bought the book because of the movie. And that was a right decision 'cause the movie is loosely based on the book and, as usual, the book have way more information than the movie. But I must admit that the movie actually destroyed my reading, as I tried to find where the facts in the book happened in the movie. In my head, I deconstructed the movie and rebuild it based on the book. But some facts were never mentioned in the movie and some scenes never did actually happened in the book.
First thing: the book doesn't follow a linear path. Swofford sometimes talk about his days in the army and, suddenly, slips back to his childhood. Not that the facts aren't related, but it kinda makes the book hard to read (when, say, he's describing something in the desert and slips to the days in boot camp -- sometimes I got lost trying to figure out if he was talking about the desert or bootcamp) but also provides a wider view of his emotions and decisions -- the things that he realizes took him into the war.
Second: he is not the nice guy portrayed by Jake Gyllenhaal. He wasn't afraid to tell his infidelities when he was training (with girls living in the cities near the camps before the Gulf War) and some of things giving to the "bad" companion in the movie were, actually Swofford. But a lot of the nice/cool/thoughtful things other characters did in the movie were also Swofford.
I did actually liked reading his (and let me make this bold: *his*) views of the war. I guess Johnny, Fowler and Ditterman would have some different views and only reading all those you could get some idea of what was going on inside American soldiers minds. And then you'd have to read three other books by Iraqi soldiers to have a good view of the war. But Swofford never promised to give you the whole view -- only his.”
Julio B wrote this review Thursday, July 17 2008.
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