Home of the Brave

Home of the Brave is probably one of the most poorly executed films of the year. On paper and on the release calendar, Home seemed like a would be contender. It had a serious, urgent subject matter (the war in Iraq) and a mid-December release date that put it up against the very best of the year’s potential Oscar nominees. However, despite all of the apparent enthusiasm from the studio, this is really just a badly handled and annoyingly melodramatic lecture about war and its aftermath. The story is a creaky pile of clichés about soldiers who return from war wounded and haunted and go on to become alcoholics who drive drunk and go on rampages. None of this is helped by the awkward direction of Irwin Winkler who orchestrates the movie with a very heavy hand that makes even the film’s more resonant scenes feel clunky and uncomfortable. Mr. Winkler tries too hard to lay in his message with brutal but ineffective action scenes that soullessly depict the deaths of many soldiers without making us really feel for them in the way that we should. When you first see the movie it clearly exudes the qualities of a slick action pic, but this is material that needs to be treated with a much more somber tone. It takes artistry to find the depth in violence, and this is not an artful film. It’s a picture absent of naturalism and stylized in all the wrong ways.

In perhaps one of the most wrongly comedic deaths in a long while, Winkler has teen dream Chad Michael Murray gunned down from behind in an unbelievably exaggerated slow motion shot. It embodies very much what he is doing wrong here. He is stretching the material. He tries to make it so clear and so obvious that it loses realism and intensity. Honestly, though, who wouldn’t chuckle at Chad Michael Murray being shot in slow motion? You know you would. Besides, that doesn’t even begin to cover all of the badness here. There are even more laughs to be had over soap star Brian Presley’s heinously over the top grieving or the sheer bogusness of wannabe actor 50 Cent grunting “I’ll cover you” just seconds prior to all of this. Seriously, has a slow motion death ever been effective? Seriously?

This leads sort of into the next problem here. Winkler assembled a pretty mediocre cast who cannot truly carry the weight of the story. Nearly all of them try so hard to emote that you can physically see them straining their eyes to form tears. Samuel L. Jackson carries himself well enough and Jessica Biel is slowly improving over time, but I don’t think either of them really suited the material well enough to make it work. It helps that they had the most effective stories of the film and got to play the better moments here, but they still outclass their costars by a mile.

It really is gutsy to make a film about the events and the effects of a current war, especially one that is the cause of so much debate and controversy. That being said, if you’re going to tackle an issue that is this important and socially relevant, then you really need to make something special out of it. It has to be poignant and articulate filmmaking that brings insight to all that is going on. To just casually film devastation and wait for the tears that follow is a useless and tedious exercise in unnecessary moviemaking. I believe that everyone at work here, including Winkler and his cast, mean well and are trying their best, but none of them deliver enough to really make me feel like this film has any reason to exist.

Grade: D