I second that Red. I have my doubts about this movie being “fair” to the Marines. After all, nothing has been fair about this whole mess. Besides, the info is slowly being declassified so who did the producer use as sources - the media, the “innocent civilians”?
Surprisingly Broomfield was able to interview some of the Marines involved in the incident. "We spent five days in a motel in San Diego interviewing them for probably 10 hours a day, just to get a sense of their lives and who they really were. They were very wary to begin with, but once people start talking, they really talk. The main Marine character we focus on was this guy called Ramirez. The night he got back from Iraq he broke into a truck and basically had post-traumatic stress and ended up driving into a house. He was best friends with the guy who was killed by the bomb, and then had the job of writing numbers on the dead people's heads and photographing them. They were extremely tough and had seen a lot of action. They talked about chasing each other around with people's legs and kicking people's brains around."
I assume by "Ramirez", the director means LCpl. Briones whose story is pretty much what Broomfield describes. Except that Briones (and another photographer, LCpl. Andrew Wright, who made similar accusations about a massacre) wasn't really "involved" in the incident. Neither Briones or Wright were there when it happened.
So, in brief, the movie is based on Marines who weren't there. Just like the main "witnesses" against the Haditha Marines weren't there either.