Grade: D
Important subject, good intentions, bad movie. That pretty much sums up “Home of the Brave,” a well-meaning but flat-footed message picture about the traumatic effects the Iraq war is having on servicemen and women. Irwin Winkler’s film has a major star in Samuel L. Jackson–whose performance is easily the best thing about it–but otherwise it’s not much above the level of a standard-issue cable TV movie, and not a particularly good one at that.
The picture begins with what will ultimately prove its best sequence–a twenty-minute scene concluding in an insurgent assault on an American convoy in Iraq, in which one soldier (Chad Michael Murray, from “One Tree Hill”) is killed and others severely injured or traumatized. The film then comes home with the characters, becoming something akin to “The Worst Year of Their Lives.” First there’s the funeral of the dead soldier, and then come the difficulties of the survivors fitting back in. One is Will Marsh (Jackson), a doctor who takes to drinking excessively, much to the distress of wife Penelope (Victoria Rowell), and who has special trouble dealing with his rebellious teen son Billy (Sam Jones III, from the earlier seasons of “Smallville”), who’s both anti-war in general and angry with his father for being a part of it. Another is Vanessa Price (Jessica Biel), a young woman who lost much of her right arm in the ambush, was treated on the spot by Marsh and now is fitted with a prosthetic hand. A third is Tommy Yates (Brian Presley), who has trouble coping with the loss of his best friend and has returned to find the old job at a gun store no longer his. And finally there’s Jamal (Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson), whose back was injured in pursuit of the attackers and rages after his return when his girlfriend rejects him and the VA bureaucracy fails to give him the help he feels he needs.
The script by Mark Friedman focuses on these vets’ readjustment to civilian life, which some of them manage better than others but all struggle with. That’s certainly a subject worthy of dramatic treatment (as well as political action), but this movie doesn’t do it justice. The screenplay is cliche-ridden and obvious, the direction–apart from the opening assault, which has some visceral power–slack, and the production threadbare, with flat, undistinguished cinematography by Tony Pierce-Roberts.
And the acting is frankly subpar. Jackson brings his usual energy to Marsh, but the doc’s demons are never convincingly delineated, and his abrupt outbursts have a clumsily theatrical tone (a Thanksgiving dinner scene is especially bad). Biel works hard to little real effect, and while Presley seems a likable fellow, his performance is bland. That leaves Jackson, who rants through his role in a generalized, unfocused fashion without much insight or conviction. The supporting cast barely gets by; even Christina Ricci, who shows up in a cameo as the dead soldier’s widow, comes across as amateurish.
Veterans of the Iraq war certainly deserve gratitude and understanding. But sincere motivation doesn’t insure a good film, as Irwin Winkler’s career has, alas, so often demonstrated. “Home of the Brave” may mean well, but its sheer ineptitude trumps its noble aspirations.