When the show shifts to the reactions back stateside, it reverts to more well-worn conventions.
This technique might work on print in Raddatz’s book, but the constant back-and-forth between timelines and continents breaks much of the immediacy of the danger they face.
Hopping between the backstories of individual soldiers often means digging back into his life before arriving in Iraq. Michael Kelly brings an ideal blend of archetype and the unexpected to depicting Voresky’s calm, direct demeanor, easing into the no-nonsense charges and accountability without having to resort to brash drill-sergeant theatrics. There’s urgency in their orders and directions, and they still bring a sense of vulnerability that hero-centric stories rarely let in. But Bonilla and Ritter both project a much less boisterous, showy form of leadership. One of the strengths of “The Long Road Home” is that it not only shows the diversity of backgrounds and age groups and cultural perspectives of the people involved in this conflict, it allows its actors to approach each of their roles as individuals and not cogs in a military wheel.Ī handful of the soldiers seem closer to the traditional mold of TV/film grunts. Many war stories confuse a unified platoon of soldiers with the need for a unified style of performance. But as presented here, these talks often feel like they’re there to orient the audience’s allegiances and to hammer home thematic ideas, rather than be the lived-in chatter from before, during, and after a crisis. Conversations about what it means to be a soldier and the nature of the war they’re fighting are definitely far from fiction: It would be impossible to expect that between-combat small talk wouldn’t eventually touch on those topics. The tension from the events being depicted lends them an air of authenticity, which unfortunately renders much of the surrounding dialogue-heavy scenes as a stilted substitute. There’s a true attention to detail, whether it’s the language and urgency of radio calls or the way that spent gunner shells slide off the tank hood when the vehicle comes to a screeching halt.
Not only does “The Long Road Home” adopt the perspective of soldier and civilian alike, it establishes a storytelling order for the sequences when bullets rip through armored tanks and RPGs destroy building supports.
Telling the tale of the attack and rescue, series creator Mikko Alanne and director Phil Abraham bring a literal number of angles to the story. Bonilla) to Lieutenant Colonel Gary Volesky (Michael Kelly), the highest-ranking featured soldier. Each of the series’ eight episodes tracks a soldier involved in the initial attack or the recovery effort to bring their brothers back to safety, from Company leader Captain Troy Denomy (Jason Ritter) to Lieutenant Shane Aguero (E.J. “The Long Road Home” draws its story from “Black Sunday,” the name given to the ambush that caught members of the First Cavalry Division in Sadr City and led to a days-long siege with casualties inside the unit and beyond.
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