Then suddenly we’re back in the States, where, after their welcome-home parties, the traumatized soldiers stew and sulk while loved ones question them worriedly and try to understand. “Home of the Brave” feels both premature and hopelessly stale: premature because so many thousands of American troops remain in Iraq with no timetable for an exit, and stale because the drama suggests a pallid imitation of the real thing so easily found in documentaries like “The War Tapes.” “Home of the Brave” suggests that when the time comes for Hollywood to take on the war in Iraq, those documentaries are going to pose a serious challenge to filmmakers seeking credibility.Ĭurtis Jackson, center, a k a the rapper 50 Cent, in Home of the Brave, about soldiers home from Iraq. Devoid of personality, their tidy cut-and-paste speeches have the ring of carefully composed and edited distillations of previous home-from-the-front movies.įunctional clockwork is not to be confused with good timing.
Jackson as Will Marsh, a glowering, embittered Army medic who, once he is stateside, develops a drinking problem.īy the end of “Home of the Brave,” you may feel as if you have just sat through an earnest made-for-television movie featuring actors who are too pretty to be real people dutifully recycling a formula. Most of those noises emanate from Samuel L. But as this cautious, politically evenhanded movie grinds along like clockwork, the fuse that should spark an emotional explosion fizzles after some sporadic hisses and sputters. The kindest description of “Home of the Brave,” the first Hollywood movie to examine the experience of American soldiers returning from Iraq, might be that it is fueled by noble intentions.ĭirected by Irwin Winkler from a script by Mark Friedman, a first-time screenwriter, it wants to be a smaller-scaled, contemporary “Best Years of Our Lives.” And two of its characters - one who has lost a hand and another who can’t settle down - carry echoes of that 1946 William Wyler classic.
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