Joining the marines, 20-year-old Tony Swofford (
Jake Gyllenhaal) seeks sense, maybe a way to fit in. In training camp, he becomes a sniper and learns to dote on his gun. When Swoff and his spotter Troy (
Peter Sarsgaard) are sent, along with Staff Sergeant Sykes (
Jamie Foxx), to the Saudi desert, they're instructed to hydrate and train. Days and days and days they wait. They play football, drink, spit prefab answers for the press, and erect a Wall of Shame to their cheating girlfriends back home to survive the monotony, as they also anticipate the worst. Macho and childish at the same time, they can't imagine the horrors they will behold. At last, they're sent to a battleground that's been decimated by the awesome U.S. air war. Traipsing through the desert until they come on what became known as the Highway of Death, they look out on charred vehicles and corpses, the top layer of sand burned black beneath their boots.