Home of the Brave
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Actor: 50 Cent, Brian Presley, Christina Ricci, Jessica Biel, Samuel L. JacksonBrand: JACKSON,SAMUEL L.
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); Arabic (Original Language); English (Original Language); Spanish (Original Language); French (Dubbed); Spanish (Dubbed)
Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 106 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-10-23
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
DVD Reviews of Home of the Brave
DVD Review: One would wish more were so fortunate
Summary: 5 Stars
HotB is about three soldiers returning back from a tour in the ongoing war in Iraq and their adjustment issues. In the leads: Samuel Jackson as army surgeon Will Marsh, who feels guilty about his powerlessness to save people and about having become desensitized to their suffering; Jessica Biel as supply runt Vanessa Price, who got her right hand blown off by a roadside bomb, triggered by a kid with a cellphone; Brian Presley as soldier Tommy Yates, who lost his best friend just days before the scheduled return home as a result of the same ambush that occasioned Vanessa's injury.
That ambush of what amounts to a humanitarian supply convoy is what loosely connects the characters; as Marsh is the first to tend to Vanessa and she briefly catches a glimpse of Yates as well, before everything goes to the dogs of war.
The first segment, in Iraq, portrays some of the pressures of being a soldier, at all levels and in all functions; always having to be on guard, because anything else will kill you. The operative term is 'always'; unrelenting tension and stress, sometimes apparently qualifying as mild, but it never leaves you. For there are people around who hate you and will kill you whenever they can. There are also those who don't hate you and who may even be glad you're there and doing what you're doing, but it's in the nature of things that they will not go out with the same fervor and try to protect you; nor will they speak out in your defense with the same vigor as your opponents. This is, after all, the nature of these things.
So, these three come home--plus a few other, more peripheral, figures--and, unlike is the case in other 'soldiers returning home' movies, nothing much actually happens. Which is part of the problem. For the normality of the life of those they are charged to defend--for whatever reason and motivation--is stifling with its normality and the complete lack of appreciation of their situation by those they return home to. So Marsh walks into a home where his son is disgusted not only at the war, but also at his father being a part of it; plus he has trouble sleeping, because he had gotten so used to not getting much sleep. Vanessa has to deal with being a solo divorced mum whose relationship with former boyfriend, Ray (James McDonald), went to the dogs some time ago, and who has to deal with being a one-handed cripple, who can't accept help even from friendly strangers like Cary (Jeffrey Nordling). Tommy has to deal with his father, who's a good guy but a bit dense and simple; a former buddy who's gone mentally AWOL for a number of reasons, and whose rage focuses on his former girlfriend who isn't interested in him anymore; as well as Tommy's own nagging guilt feelings at leaving his fellow soldiers behind to fight, while his own life's become 'safe'--in a manner of speaking.
The problems at home would have appeared trivial in comparison to those these three faced while in the warzone. But they're not, because all problems and their magnitude are relative. Still, all of them have this notion that they don't fit, all for apparently different reasons--they all are the same.
Irwin Winkler's direction and the script focuses on the ways in which it might be possible to overcome those problems; the manner in which those exposed to the brutalities of war may be redeemed and become, if not 'normal', but at least 'adapted' to life outside a warzone again. In the process the movie is careful to lay open the mood in the US with regards to the Iraq war; both sides of it, and with equal and evenhanded fairness. In the process it avoids making what amounts to a judgment, because that's not what what this movie is all about. It has much more the air of Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down, which also focused on soldiers, rather than politics; all the time acknowledging that there were political issues, but they were at another level and sometimes had to be put aside--with the notable exception of a certain, entirely justified, cynicism toward all politicians; as well as all those who basically don't end up having to put themselves in harm's way--except maybe in an election, which hardly compares.
The solutions offered by the film are fairly simple, and they have to do with love, understanding, consideration and appreciation; not just as carried out by the professional machinery of organized 'rehabilitation', but by the only ones who can do this in a sustained way: family, friends, neighbors and so on, in an ever-widening circle. And this isn't happening, by and large, though the movie suggests that it might. Sometimes. For the lucky ones. Because, as far as the fate of returned soldiers these days are concerned, all three main protagonists in HotB qualify as 'fortunate'. One would wish that it were more than a few.
The editing of this film is interesting and fits with the need to follow the fates of three separate lives without too much discontinuity as the focus shifts from one person to another and another and back again. It's also difficult to tell the passage of time, but once one gets used to it, it flows easily enough. The moving shots in the warzone contrast with the many static ones 'at home'. Short scenes alternate with long ones in deft timing. The pacing is thoughtful and measured. At the end there are more questions unanswered than at the beginning. Which is as it should be.
Description of Home of the Brave
When a humanitarian mission in Iraq is derailed by an explosive ambush, a small band of American soldiers find themselves fighting for their lives.The fact that Home of the Brave is about soldiers coming home from a war that isn't even over is just one of the things that's off in this film; director Irwin Winkler and screenwriter Mark Friedman's 2006 tale of the problems faced by the men and women returning from Iraq is also hampered by thoroughly predictable storytelling, sub-par acting, and sometimes painfully on-the-nose dialogue, reducing what could have been a provocative and challenging effort into so much TV movie fodder. When Army medic Will Marsh (Samuel L. Jackson, who does his best to rise above the level of the material) and soldiers Vanessa Price (Jessica Biel) and Tommy Yates (Brian Presley) return to Spokane, Washington, major readjustment problems loom, mostly due to a chaotic ambush in a small Iraqi town (occurring less than two weeks before they were to be sent home, the incident is so unsurprising that anyone could have seen it coming). Will and his angry teenage son wage their own war, while Dad takes to the bottle; Vanessa's learning to cope with a prosthetic hand, while Tommy's grieving over the best buddy who died in the ambush and the loss of his job, girlfriend, and self-respect. Those matters and the clichéd, unconvincing way in which they're handled, along with the film's refusal to take a strong stand either for or against the war, obscure the potentially much more interesting issues. Are these soldiers patriots, or merely pawns? Were they doing their righteous duty by serving in this conflict, or were they victims sent off to suffer and perhaps die by a bunch of men in suits who never saw a minute of combat themselves? Other home-from-war films, from 1946's The Best Years of Our Lives to 1978's Coming Home to 1989's Born on the Fourth of July, have dealt with these and other issues a good deal more effectively than the earnest and well-intentioned but not very compelling Home of the Brave. --Sam Graham
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