DVD Review: Home of the Brave

By Jeff Swindoll Oct 25, 2007, 16:47 GMT

Follows three soldiers and their struggles to adjust to life at home after extended tours in Iraq. ...more

A group of soldiers return from Iraq, each with their own baggage and ways of coping with the war.  Each of their stories intersects as they go stateside and some of them will be able to cope and others will not.  

Vanessa Price (Jessica Biel), Will Marsh (Samuel L. Jackson), Tommy Yates (Brian Presley), and Jamal Aiken (Curtis Jackson aka 50 Cent) have all returned from the war in Iraq.  All of them were involved in a firefight right before being sent back stateside.  Will is a doctor and the rest were soldiers and were on a mercy mission when they were ambushed by terrorists. 

Vanessa was driving the armored vehicle and when a bomb goes off she loses her hand.  Dr. Marsh returns to his wife and children, but his son Billy (Sam Jones III) is against the war and sparks are flying between father and son, not to mention tension with his wife Penelope (Victoria Rowell). 

Tommy lost his best friend in the ambush and goes home to find that he no longer has a job.  He has to go to the funeral of his friend stateside and deal with his pain as well as that of Sarah (Christine Ricci), his friend’s wife.  Jamal is just angry and his rage boils over.  Each of these stories intersect with each other stateside.  

Each of the stories told find the subject of the tale flawed by their experience in Iraq.  No one comes out of war without some change and all the subjects have different ways of dealing with the stress.  Some find alcohol or drugs while others let the rage build inside them until it. 

What I disagree with is that director Irwin Winkler shows that all of the characters come back home as damaged goods, some more damaged than others.  I’m sure that all of the stories told have some basis in reality (meaning some folks go down these same roads), but does everyone have to be damaged?  I guess there wouldn’t be a movie without these conflicts. 

Jamal is probably the worst of the group with 50 Cent really not doing a very acting job in my opinion and his character really being a violent thug and not very likable.  A character that should know better decides to drown his woes in a bottle and finds no easy answers at the bottom. 

Vanessa has to come to terms with the anger and having to cope with her injury and Tommy has to come to terms with seeing his friend die.  The plot seems like one that you’ve seen before (and more than likely Vietnam was the war).  I guess the soldiers are given more of a human face. 

I recall in horror or other films that when you wanted to make a character a psycho you just said that they were a Vietnam vet.  I don’t think that this film sinks to that level, but it does show them as flawed human beings.  

Home of the Brave is presented in a dual-sided disc with fullscreen on one side and anamorphic widescreen (2.35:1) enhanced for 16x9 televisions on the other.  Special features include a commentary with director/writer Irwin Winkler, writer Mark Friedman, and producer Rob Cowan.  There are also two deleted scenes with optional commentary.  

Home of the Brave is a decent film, but feels like a “movie of the week” with all the characters bumping into each other.  I would’ve liked a more positive face put on some of the characters, but they didn’t make them look like psychos. 

Home of the Brave is now available at Amazon. As of yet, there is not a release date for the UK. Visit the DVD database for more information.