Iraqi insurgents bomb a convoy of US Marines, resulting in the death of their most popular officer. Enraged by this loss, his young Marine buddies carry out a brutal retaliation. Their violent house-searches lead to the massacre of 24 people, many of whom are women and children - tragic casualties of a war they cannot control.
The Marines too are victims, attacked, wounded, and forced to respond in the way they have been trained. But when events occur at great speed and under extreme stress, can marines in the line of fire be accused of murder?

I thought telling the story like this from three points of view was a way of really understanding what's going on. Despite the immense media coverage one has very little understanding of the humanity of the situation and what the war means an a very personal level.
We know this is a very unpopular war, but what's it like to be a 17-year-old Marine whose never been out of the US before fighting for survival? We hear about insurgents every day, but have no idea of who they are, or like what's it's like trying to have a family on day-to-day level living in a combat zone. This film is a war film, but it's a human story about three groups of people who are flung together struggling to survive and protect their friends and family. This is war and no-one has chosen to be there, each one deals with it in their own way.
We worked from a detailed structure and script outline, but most dialogue except for key points were improvised. Most of the characters had never acted before, they are the real thing. The Marines in the film had all previously seen extensive combat fighting in Iraq. Many of them had seen action in Fallujah, the most intense fighting of the war. They were able to bring their experiences and training to make this a very authentic war film. They also are proud to have been Marines and made sure that what was shown was authentic. We gathered the Marines from around the United States advertising around the bases, on radio and newsletters. To do the research for the film we met with Marines from Kilo Company who'd been there on the day of 19 Nov 2005. Similarly, with the Iraqis, we met with survivors as well as witnesses from the day. We interviewed hundreds of Iraqis most of whom had seen combat.
The Passion and feeling in the film is real and the main task as director was to create these environments and spaces for the people to be themselves. One of the most amazing things that I saw during the making of the film was friendships being struck up between the Marines and Iraqis that neither side had felt possible before.
The film was shot in Jordan which is on the border of Iraq, so the geography and people are very similar. We had amazing co-operation from the Royal Jordanian Film
Commission and had great local support once the people had adjusted to US troops in Humv's rolling through their streets.