You may not be interested in war, but HBO is interested in you.

“Generation Kill,” an ambitious seven-part miniseries beginning Sunday at 9 p.m., rubs the viewer’s face smack into the first weeks of the invasion of Iraq. The series re-enacts the journey of a colorfully foul-mouthed group of Marines in under-armored Humvees as they push through the desert toward Baghdad, meeting sporadic resistance and occasional smiles from the locals along the way.

“Salaam aleikum, vote Republican,” Sgt. Brad “Iceman” Colbert (Alexander Skarsgard) responds to one civilian as the Marines drive on past. (He’s got irony as well as ice in his veins.) Seated behind him is a reporter for Rolling Stone embedded with Team 1 Alpha, Evan Wright (Lee Tergesen), on whose real-life book the series is based and who serves as a co-writer and consulting producer on the series.

Hazed by the men for writing for a “liberal” magazine, but revered by them for having previously written for Hustler, Mr. Wright was in the fortunate position — minus the bullets flying past him — of having one Marine after another drop diamonds of 21st-century macho observations in his lap — everything from why Iraq is a mess to the epidemic of obesity in America to how it’s America’s destiny to colonize the world, whether or not that’s good for the world. Interestingly enough, the theory put forward by Corporal Ray Person (James Ransone) on why “the cradle of civilization” seems to be anything but — briefly put, and minus the barrage of four-letter words, it boils down to Muslim culture being too sexually oppressive — accords more or less exactly with that of the British novelist Martin Amis. Whether this reflects well on the grunt, or to the detriment of Mr. Amis, will be up to the viewer to decide.

Shot in a vérité style, with the action unfolding from the Marines’ point of view, “Generation Kill” is as much about our current “Greatest Generation” as it is about the war itself. As Mr. Wright states in his book, these men, often from broken homes, were “raised on hip-hop, Marilyn Manson, and Jerry Springer. For some, slain rapper Tupac is an American patriot whose writings are better known than the speeches of Abraham Lincoln. Many are on more intimate terms with video games, reality TV shows, and Internet porn than they are with their own parents.”

Nonetheless, as the miniseries demonstrates, these young troops are capable of nobility, even if they wouldn’t dream of using the word. Yet at a certain point, this becomes a serious liability. Older civilizations, such as the Iraqi one, are not afraid to verbalize high-flown sentiments — on the contrary, they seem to be addicted to them, whether of the flowery or bombastic variety — and people who cannot or will not do so are perhaps rightly seen as being, in some sense, humanly deficient.

Movies about the war in Iraq have generally tanked at the box office, and it will be interesting to see how this new series, with more time to devote to its details and characters, fares at the Home Box Office. Viewers will be encouraged by the fact that the series is helmed by David Simon and Ed Burns, the creative team behind the HBO smash “The Wire” and, like that show, this one frequently pits the men in the field against superiors who give the often wrongheaded commands. As a sociological study of a new generation of American warriors, it’s rarely less than fascinating, and the manner in which the leading characters are brought forth and individualized from among a large cast is impressive.

Based on the opening episodes, the filmmakers have not shied away from presenting the tedium of war, as well as sporadic bursts of gut-wrenching fear, chaos, and excitement. The opening battle scene turns out to be a training exercise, and there are significant stretches during which the Marines face the bewilderment of a horizon apparently devoid of enemies only to suddenly find themselves sitting ducks for Arab snipers in the distance. Much attention is given over to mundane necessities like snatching an hour’s sleep or finding a suitable place for defecation. Accompanied by a single Arab translator, whom they do not entirely trust, the men are indeed strangers in a strange, almost moon-like land (the series was shot in South Africa), willing to obey orders but frequently contemptuous of at least some of the officers handing them down.

Although filled with the soldiers’ view of the war — and their frequent barbs aimed at the “liberal media” and general blue-state mind-set — “Generation Kill” also demonstrates how thoroughly the “liberal media,” whether in the form of video games, movies, television shows, or song lyrics, has colonized their minds. It also shows how racial, ideological, and even sexual differences — Sgt. Rudy Reyes, who is played by Mr. Reyes himself in his first acting role, is portrayed as a buff metrosexual exhibitionist who is teased for wanting to live in San Francisco — are tolerated and even enjoyed within the framework of tight military discipline, so long as each man comes through (as Sgt. Reyes does) when it counts.

Ironically, diversity of opinion flourishes much better in a dust-blown Humvee barreling toward Baghdad than in your typical Manhattan Starbucks. One black soldier openly states his view of the white man’s will to world domination, of which he does not think highly, only to add that if you can’t beat ’em, you may as well join ’em. And as long as he does join ’em, he’s more or less welcome to say what he wants.

Wisely eschewing an obtrusive political stance, the film does not flinch from showing civilian casualties — entire families charred inside passenger cars like grisly avant-garde art installations — not to mention the corpses that line the roads. These were the first 40 days of the war, when attacks from chemical weapons were still a fear and few doubted that Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction would be found.

Caught by jiggly, nervous camerawork, the actors, directed by Susanna White and Simon Cellan Jones, are uniformly excellent. Standouts include Mr. Skarsgard, who has a hypnotic quality reminiscent of a less malevolent James Woods, Chance Kelly, who plays a Lieutenant Colonel with a voice that is a raspy ghost following a bout with throat cancer, and Neal Jones in a fine comic turn as a Seargent Major with an insatiable desire to police the length of his charges’ mustaches. Mr. Tergesen is also particularly adept at capturing a journalist’s hovering outsider presence, and at registering a reporter’s joy at all the foul-mouthed bon mots thrown his way.

By presenting war as an accumulation of tiny details, and allowing us to enter the eyes and minds of the men who fight it, HBO has a series it should be proud of.

bbernhard@nysun.com