SOLDIER BOYS The men of Generation Kill strategize.

Ed Burns knows Baltimore. His experiences there as a former detective and public-school teacher directly impacted his work as a writer on The Wire, HBO’s novellike, high-bar-for-television drama (sorry, Sopranos). Burns doesn’t, however, know Iraq—at least not nearly as well. So for Generation Kill, the seven-part HBO miniseries adaptation of journalist Evan Wright’s award-winning 2004 book, Burns (and fellow Wire alum David Simon deferred to those with firsthand knowledge.

“We had Evan on the project the whole time,” Burns says, “and we were extraordinarily fortunate to have Eric Kocher”—one of the marines featured in the book—“as our military adviser. He was still dusting off the sands of Iraq when we hooked up with him. Eric made damn sure that we got it right.”

The resulting product, which premieres on HBO Sunday 13 at 8pm, is right on target. Filmed throughout Africa with an almost uncanny degree of accuracy, Kill captures the exhilaration, boredom and frustration of an elite recon marine unit serving in Iraq at the start of the invasion. A quick victory was still a plausible prospect, and the many setbacks and horrors of the war were still a ways off, or only in their inception.

“We were very conscious of following the path [Wright] cut through the war,” Burns explains. “We didn’t try to change it into an action flick or a superhero thing. There is so much power in that book, just the reality of what they went through—it would have been crazy to go the other way.”

If The Wire demonstrated anything, it’s that Burns, along with Simon, doesn’t do things in half measures. Kill goes to great lengths to replicate the often-outsize personalities of its fast-talking, trash-talking marines. Colorful, larger-than-life characters—like the Ripped Fuel–enhanced Cpl. Josh Ray Person (Wire vet James Ransone) and Lt. Col. Stephen Ferrando (nicknamed “Godfather” for his post–throat cancer rasp)—seem like the stuff of creative liberties, if not outright fabrication, until you read Wright’s firsthand account of them in his book. The espresso-sipping, Zen master–quoting, in-touch-with-his-feminine-side martial arts master, Sgt. Rudy Reyes, even plays himself. “I know these actors were very aware that they were playing real guys, many of whom were back over there, so they sucked up as much information as they could on them,” Burns says. “They really tried to honor those guys.”

He and the other writers in turn tried to honor the marines’ real-life language, in all its glory. Their dialogue—much of it hilarious shades of blue, if also often racist and homophobic—provided infinite writers’ fodder, which explains why so much of it made the leap straight from Wright’s book to the script. “These guys have extraordinary wits,” Burns emphasizes. “They spend three or four months in boats, waiting for something to happen. So you’ve got 22 alpha males crammed in there, and if you can’t get your wits sharpened, they’ll cut you to pieces.” Such close quarters force the men into self-protective postures, Burns adds: “The banter is like hammers that they use. There’s nothing really underneath it. If your sister or your mother is your weak spot, then damn it, that’s what I’m going after.”

Of course, this is a war series, and long bouts of tedium are interrupted by firefights heralded by the rallying cry, “Get some!” In the fast-and-furious battle sequences, skill and luck play equal roles. But the show also stresses how taking out an Iraqi mortar team sometimes can seem less pressing than finding the right time and place to take a dump.

Vitally, Kill is neither prowar nor antiwar, but an exploration of the gray areas of this particular war. “I think Evan’s book can be read both ways,” Burns notes. “The Marine Corps Heritage Foundation, a nonprofit connected with the Marine Corps, gave that book an award. Yet if you have a strong bias against the war, you can see it as an antiwar book. That’s the beauty of it; there’s a balance there.”

Burns admits that, given the less-than-great track record of other Iraq-themed projects, he isn’t sure how audiences will react. “David Simon says that if he can get you to lean forward, closer to the TV, to try and heighten your senses, that means you’ve got your brain working,” he notes.

Premature proclamations can be problematic, but we’re pretty confident when we say to Burns and Simon: Mission accomplished.

Generation Kill rolls in Sunday 13, 8pm on HBO.