Home of the Brave

---

Tools:
Recommend review to a friend »

---

Every war deserves to have its story told, and its warriors or their memories honored. And with the second Gulf War waged by the second Bush now nearing its fifth full year, it's certainly not inappropriate for movies to keep appearing.

But two things struck me while I was listening to the commentary track of "Home of the Brave." At one point, one of the speakers--I couldn't tell whether it was director Irwin Winkler, writer Mark Friedman, or producer Rob Cowan--starts talking about how U.S. support for returning veterans has been insufficient, but then adds, "I don't want to get too political."

I really wish they had, because it would have cleared up at least one part of the film for me. In a previous lifetime I worked at a prosthetics factory, painting artificial hands. These things had all sorts of movement possibilities and were coated with a plastic resin that was custom-painted to match the customer. And this was back in the early '70s. So I couldn't help but notice that the prosthesis that the Army gives Jessica Biel's character to replace her missing hand looks like the kind of rigid rubber hand that you buy at a joke shop to prank people! I mean, was this a goofy oversight in the props department, or a statement that Winkler and Co. were trying to make about how cheaply and shabbily our returning veterans have been treated by the Veteran's Administration? Because we never know for sure, that hand comes across as something silly as a rubber monster in a horror film.

It occurred to me that the filmmakers have crafted a movie that tries to make a statement, tries to be respectfully patriotic, and tries to incorporate the debates surrounding the Iraq War into various character exchanges. In other words, they try to have it not both ways, but all ways. Of course, as the characters mouth these arguments, we can't help but realize that they're characters that seem to exist solely for the purpose of being the mouthpiece for a certain attitude or point of view. "We went over there for oil," the son of a returning doctor (Samuel L. Jackson) says. And we hear the counterpoint. All through the film there's this attempt to present both sides of a debate, as if they were trying to make something that could be shown in social studies or history classes to teach students about the disparate views of a complicated period in U.S. history. But the film itself seems more noncommittal than complex.

Partly, I'm sure, it's because none of the characters or their lives come across as being complex. They come across as "types," and that flattens them out as if they'd been trod upon by every familiar character like them that we've previously seen in films. They're not real people. They're walking, talking embodiments of a point of view, or illustrations of the different types of casualties that this war has produced. And the dialogue? "It's not about you, it's about me" is the type of line we get--melodramatic lines than never feel as if they grow out of a character. They're the kind of lines that make you conscious of the fact that you're watching a movie.

Another thing that struck me about the commentary is that at one point the filmmakers began patting themselves on the backs for including minorities. Okay, but of the four major characters, why is it that the two African-American soldiers are the ones who end up reaching for their guns stateside and getting violent, while the two whites are simply sad or feeling marginalized because of their disabilities? Just wondering.

Then there's the way this film is split between Iraq and the home front. The box notes say, "When a mission in Iraq is derailed by an explosive ambush, a small band of U.S. soldiers find themselves fighting for their lives" in a "gripping, action-packed tale of a chaotic battle that will leave these heroic Americans forever changed." Well, be warned that the gripping, action-packed battle sequences in Iraq--which, by the way, is far stronger and more believable than the rest of the film--occur within the film's first half-hour. The bulk of the film concerns the soldiers who've returned home to try to pick up their lives where they left off. We watch a doctor (Jackson) feeling that something as routine as a neighborhood cookout is so surreal that it starts him drinking more beer than he probably should (and of course he progresses to the point where he becomes a raging drunk who rips out his son's lip-ring and goes for that gun). We watch another black soldier (Curtis Jackson) so alienated that he ends up in a hostage situation. We see follow another returnee (Brian Presley) who can't get his own job back and ends up selling popcorn at a movie theater. And we mainly watch a P.E. teacher (Jessica Biel) who has a difficult time adjusting to that bad artificial hand, and, like the rest, dealing with the strange reality that their frightening military experience nonetheless felt more like "home" than home. When you've been changed so much, who understands you better than someone who's also been through it?

---

---