Movie Review: Home of the Brave

By Colin MacLean Dec 23, 2006, 9:04 GMT

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

‘Home of the Brave’ is the first film to examine the plight of soldiers returning from the Iraq war.

The film has its heart in the right place but the plot is predictable and the characters never get beyond plastic stereotype.

Director Irwin Winkler divides his time between producing (Rocky Balboa) and directing. He is an able if uninspired filmmaker. He obviously hopes we will become involved with his emotionally shattered veterans but instead has produced a relentlessly earnest movie that has its characters working out their lives according to some preordained script.

His excellent cast gives it a game go, but are asked to mouth some of the worst dialogue since ‘Night of the Living Dead in 3D.’ 

In 1946 William Wyler got us intimately involved with the lives of returning World War II soldiers in ‘The Best Years of Our Lives’ but ‘Home of the Brave’ fails to ignite the same empathy.

‘Home of the Brave’ begins in Iraq (filmed in Morocco) with an effectively staged battle. Winkler captures the noise, panic and confusion of a troupe of soldiers suddenly trapped in a sun baked mud and brick village. Shadowy men shoot from rooftops. Soldiers watch helplessly as friends and comrades are slaughtered.

There is a foot chase through a graveyard that may remind you of playing cowboys and Indians when you were a kid but the outcome here is deadly.

The soldiers are sent back home to Seattle but after the high tension pressure cooker of Iran are unable to re-integrate into the mundane rhythms of ordinary life. Even the ordinary things civilians take for granted don’t seem to make sense any more.

Family and friends try to help but they weren’t there and don’t understand.

Will Marsh (Samuel L. Jackson) was a heroic medic at the front but embittered after living with carnage day after day, he spends his days trying to find himself in the bottom of a bottle. His wife is supportive but his son is surly, hating his father and his part in an unneeded war.  After a series of action-adventure films, Jackson must be happy to exercise his acting chops again.  His is the best performance in the movie.

Driver Vanessa Price (Jessica Biel) was caught up in the middle of the battle and lost a hand to a roadside bomb. The problems of coping with her prosthetic hand and the return to her status as single mother is too much for her. She is angry with everyone around her, dumps her old boyfriend and yells at her very young son.

Biel was once voted by Esquire as “the sexiest woman alive.” In this film, and the recent ‘The Illusionist,’ she is showing signs of developing into a fine actress.

Jamal Aiken (Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson) proves himself a capable actor as Jamal Aiken, whose destructive anger turns to violence. The moonlighting rapper exhibits an explosive screen presence.

Tommy Yates (Brian Presley), a capable actor, returns without his best friend Jordan (Chad Michael Murray), who died in his arms in the bloody shoot-out in Iraq and never finds the stuff to make his life work. Finally, as so many veterans do, he returns to the only world he can inhabit – back with his buddies at the front.

The film ends on a note of hope but because we’ve never connected with these essentially cardboard people their lives remain programmatic and uninvolving.

‘Home of the Brave’ has the makings of a powerful drama but insensitive writing and unsubtle direction rob it of the complexities this important subject demands.

Opened December 15, 2006. MPAA: Rated R for war violence and language.