Of the many ways to convey a war story, Michael Tucker decided early in making "Gunner Palace" to stick with one: Let the soldiers tell it.

As a result, his 85-minute documentary on the war in Iraq captures a mix of bravado and anxiety, frustration and determination and a chillingly grim sense of humor.

At one point, a young soldier points to metal plating recently attached to his vehicle, and, facing Tucker's camera, notes wryly:

"Part of our $87 billion budget provided some secondary armor we put on top of our thin-skinned Humvee. ... It will probably slow down the shrapnel so that it stays in your body instead of going clean through."

Tucker, 38, who lived in the Seattle area from 1978 to 1992, began filming the movie in September 2003, four months after President Bush stood on the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and announced that "major combat operations in Iraq have ended."

In the film, the soldiers of the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Field Artillery Regiment jokingly refer to their work in Baghdad as "minor combat," rounding up suspected insurgents and being exposed daily to snipers, mortar fire, booby traps and deadly "improvised explosive devices" known as IEDs.

Tucker's narrative voice, unlike that of Michael Moore's in "Fahrenheit 9/11," doesn't assert a singular point of view. Instead, the young soldiers assigned to fight the war come to grips with it themselves.

At times, their comments seem contradictory, and Tucker doesn't try to erase or gloss over the contradiction.

One soldier, assessing the mission in Iraq, says, "I don't feel like I'm defending our country anymore and that sucks." But asked if he's proud of what he's doing, he says yes: "How many people can say they're combat veterans? 19 years old and I fought in a war."

Although Tucker has an anti-war bias, he said he expects viewers will see what they want in his film, regardless of their political bent. "This is an experience. I'm not going to decide for people what they should think."

Tucker's film shows little of the war's brutal consequences — injured or killed soldiers or Iraqis. Tucker said he didn't edit out those scenes; they simply weren't in evidence during his two months with the soldiers. Instead, he said, the troops spent much of their time in tense anticipation of what might happen. In the months following the filming, however, the area of Baghdad he featured grew steadily more dangerous, and several soldiers in the regiment were killed.

The gritty language heard in the film has earned it an R rating from the Motion Picture Association of America, a rating being appealed by the film's distributor, Palm Pictures.

Tucker said he finds it curious that military recruiters can visit high schools, making their pitch to teenagers, but those same teenagers need to be shielded from the day-to-day language soldiers use.

"This is reality," he said. "And it seems there's no provision in the rating system for reality films."

Tucker's background is interesting not just for what it includes but for what it doesn't — a high-school diploma. As a youngster he lived in Bothell and on Capitol Hill and attended Seattle Prep two years before dropping out. He enlisted in the Army Reserve and worked on commercial fishing boats in Alaska, among other jobs.

His interest in film dates to about 1990, when he worked for Prosthetics Outreach Foundation, a Seattle-based nonprofit group which helps provide prosthetic care to amputees, including war victims, in developing countries.

Various projects have taken him to a number of countries, and since 1995 he has lived in Berlin, the home of his wife, Petra Epperlein, a collaborator in his films. The two have a 9-year-old daughter.

"Gunner Palace" is expected to open in Seattle on March 11.

Jack Broom: 206-464-2222 or jbroom@seattletimes.com