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Best movie of this year hands down!

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Physically and emotionally traumatized veterans of the Iraq War tell their stories in this straightforward and poignant documentary. Each narrative seems eerily similar to the others—beginning with the initial lure of the Army or Marine recruiter's pitch (laced with half-truths), proceeding to the thorough mental indoctrination of basic training(essentially, psychological conditioning to master killing as a fundamental job skill), bottoming out with the paralyzing shock of actual warfare and bearing witness to death and destruction, and concluding with the return home carrying both physical and emotional scars for which the military and the government provide sporadic—if any—support. The veterans who tell their stories seem insightful, reflective, and articulate. They are not embittered or angry malcontents who feel cheated out of entitlements (although they'd have every right to be). They are simply compassionate human beings who realize that they have lost the lives they once knew and wonder why that's happened.

There is an episode of The Simpsons which has a joke news report referring to an army training base as a "Killbot Factory". Here the comment is simply part of a throwaway joke, but what Patricia Foulkrod's documentary does is show us, scarily, that it is not that far from the truth. After World War Two the US Army decided to tackle a problem they faced throughout the war; that many soldiers got into battle and found themselves totally unable to kill another human being unless it was a matter of 'me or them'. Since then the training process of the US army has been to remove all moral scruples and turn recruits into killing machines who don't think of combatants as people. To develop in them a most unnatural state: "The sustainable urge to kill".First off, this isn't an antiwar movie as such. Whilst it certainly paints war in a very bad light, Foulkrod focuses rather on an aspect that doesn't get as much media attention as, say, the debate over the legality of a war or it's physical successes or failures; the affect the process of turning a man into a soldier has on that person as a human being. It's the paradox that to train someone to be a soldier to defend society makes them totally unsuitable to live as part of that society themselves, and whilst most of the examples and interviewees are from the current Middle East conflict Foulkrod makes the links to past conflicts, especially Vietnam, painfully clear. This isn't about any particular war, it's about the problems caused by war in general.Structurally the film seems to be split into three sections; how recruits are drawn into the army and the training they receive, how they are treated once they are in combat, and what happens once they leave the army. Once this point is reached you realise that the main target of this film is actually the policies that are inherent in the armed forced, policies that are put into place to make soldiers into an affective combat force but removing all humanity from the individuals. Those interviewed tell the camera how the recruiting process seems so clean and simple, how word like "democracy" and "freedom" are banded around, but once the training begins they become "enemy" and "kill" and "destroy". How once in action soldiers don't care what they are ordered to do, as they are ingrained with the idea that as soon as they carry out an order, whatever it may be, they are one step closer to going home. They have no political or social ideals to fight for but fight and kill as that's what they've been trained to do.But The Ground Truth's main goal is to highlight the way the US Army discards those who have fought for their country once they return home. There is no real rehabilitation given to soldiers returning, and many are forced to go home unable to cope with what they have seen and done, and most policies in place seem to be to make sure the army has no legal responsibility whatsoever for psychological affects their soldiers pick up. This is the final indignity, that once they are used they are cast away.If there is a flaw in the film it is that Foulkrod doesn't attempt to show another side to the argument. You would get the impression that every single soldier who ever went to war would come back with Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. It would have been interesting to see those of a… less liberal upbringing give their opinions of how the army handles training and policies. There is never a chance for the other side of the argument to make itself known.But other than that this is an expertly crafted documentary, and Foulkrod's use of stock footage and music is perfectly utilised to get across a side of war that too often get s passed by when discussing the fallout of war.

The hip hop rendition of a mos def performance (according to the film's musical credits)...it is an incredible piece of savage consciousness that slams the violence in your heart with each "snap" if anyone can tell me someplace this song, "Live Wire Snap" by Mos Def from "The Ground Truth", an undeniable duty to see as the Americans who might not support the mission but embrace each soul caught inside this savage miscalculation of purpose...they take on the haunting as so many of us can sit back and be angry..."Live Wire Snap" by Mos Def, where can it be founddesperate to find it :medically unable to serve

I saw this film tonight in NYC at the Landmark Sunshine. I didn't know what to expect, I'd not read much about it as I knew I would see it no matter what. All in All, it is very well done. It doesn't focus on the generalization of "Anti-War" statements, which to me, left the politics out of it. The soldiers mainly spoke of their awareness of toxicity in their training in boot camp, and how hard it was once they returned to civilian life. It was really good to see Paul Rieckhoff and Camilo Mejia tell about the difficulty in surviving not only the war, but refusing the command to go back when it was against personal morals. Make no mistake - this is not an anti-war film. Anyone who says it is hasn't seen it or is not living with the scars of war on their souls.