The young man walking out behind said quietly to himself, "It was so real."
I let him pass - he was walking alone, well-built, wearing blue scrubs ... was he a vet?
This is a film to see if you care about what's happening to the military in this meat-grinder of a war.
The film features a young man on his last day of duty back in the USA after his second tour in Iraq. But as he's getting his affairs in order to go back home, he's issued orders to report back to his unit for redeployment to Iraq. "There must be some mistake; I'm getting out today. I'm going back home."
"No sir, these orders are clear. You've been stop-lossed."
He goes AWOL ... and makes his way, finally, to New York and an attorney who specializes in helping people get a new identity and make their way to Canada for a new life. But called home to Texas because a war buddy took his own life, he meets with family again, loving parents, the father a Vietnam Vet - and heads to Mexico instead.
I'll not devulge how the film ends, but it powerfully portrays what all sociologists of war now understand - men neither fight nor die for country, but for the soldier next to them. In the most basic sense of the word, it's all about community, falling in for one another.
The power of the film is its "commentary" without commentary - how constant redeployment and stop-lossing is tearing the military apart, destroying families and leaving in its wake thousands of seriously injured and emotionally impaired women and men.
Politically, there's a certain glamor to war - ala Bush & McCain - but every personal account of war says the same thing: War is hell!"
Even the WW2 veteran, proud and stoic, is reluctant to talk about his experience - to kill or be killed does hard things to the soul, and when a professional soldier is repeatedly exposed without the hope of returning home, as did the WW2 citizen-soldier, the soul is compromised, even in the strongest personality.
Anyway, the message is profound, and the acting, cinematography and music, fits well.
Hats off to Kimberly Peirce (writer and director) and Paramount Pictures for bringing us this film.
