I didn't see this movie in the theater -- somehow I missed it when it came out, but we recently purchased the DVD and I wasn't sure what to expect. When I checked on IMDb, I was surprised at how low the movie was rated and wasn't sure what to expect. Let me say right up front, this movie is MUCH better than a 5.3.
The movie relates the experiences of a National Guard unit in Iraq due to be shipped back to the states in a few weeks. They receive a mission to escort an Army doctor to a clinic in another city and en route the convoy is ambushed. Quite a few members of the convoy are injured or killed and one of the vehicles gets hit with an IED before the convoy is able to escape to safety.
This all takes place in the first 20 minutes of the movie, and the rest of the movie is what happens when the group returns stateside, and the effects of this one incident on each of them.
What makes this film noteworthy is that it sheds light on an issue that isn't commonly addressed in films about war, and more particularly the war in Iraq: namely, the difficulties that National Guard and Army Reserve soldiers face upon returning home from an overseas tour.
There is just no way to relate to what happens in war, the unimaginable horror and sheer brutality and cruelty of it, but yet somehow there is an expectation that these citizen-soldiers can somehow just come home and magically reintegrate back into their former lives as if nothing ever happened.
The movie shows so beautifully how it is probably often not possible for this to happen because people who have lived through these kinds of experiences are changed forever. More to the point there's no way for them to relate the experiences they had "over there" to anyone who hasn't been through it themselves, so the sense of isolation and abandonment is profound. At the end of the movie, one of the characters comes to the conclusion that the only place where he even feels "normal" anymore is back in Iraq, and he re-enlists for another tour, choosing the comfort of hell over the agony of pretending everything is okay.
War IS hell, there's no denying it, and our amazing heroes in the Armed Forces have been living with this for years now, thankfully with steady backing and support from the rest of the country. But as the Reserve Components of our military are increasingly taking on a heavier and heavier burden of the war effort, I think we will start to see the effects of just how hard things for our soldiers over there are becoming. As the people coming home from war are not returning to duty at military bases, but are coming back home to their former civilian communities, civilian lives and jobs, increasingly the effects the war has on its participants will be something that will be harder and harder to ignore.
11 out of 21 found this helpful