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After over a year of duty in Iraq, a group of American soldiers finally get word that it’s time to go home—in a matter of weeks. Just after they get the news, they’re sent on a seemingly routine goodwill mission into a city to bring supplies and a doctor to help the local people. But the mission doesn’t go as planned—and their convoy is ambushed and forced into battle.
Weeks later, the soldiers are back home, in Spokane, Washington, trying to readjust to civilian life while dealing with the nightmares of the things they saw in Iraq. Tommy (Brian Presley) lost his best childhood friend in the ambush—and while he’s coping with his loss, he’s also dealing with his dad, who’s trying to push him into joining the police force. Vanessa (Jessica Biel), who lost a hand in the ambush, is emotionally distant and angry. Will (Samuel L. Jackson) is a doctor who comes home to a wife who doesn’t understand him and a teenage son who wants nothing to do with him, and it drives him straight to the bottle. And Jamal (Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson) just can’t adjust.
I can respect what the filmmakers are trying to say with this movie. I respect those who fight for the freedoms I have, and I can only imagine how difficult it must be to deal with the things they saw in the line of duty. But, that said, I’m not going to lie to you for the sake of patriotism. Home of the Brave is just plain bad.
At the risk of sounding insensitive, I’ll admit that my fellow film critics and I laughed our way through most of this movie. We also groaned. And checked our watches. One of the guys even smacked himself in the head a few times with a DVD he’d been holding. The acting is terrible—similar to what you might find in the movies I made in the basement with Dad’s video camera back in middle school. It’s melodramatic and overdone—and 50 Cent is barely even coherent. But it’s hard to say what’s worse—the acting or the writing. The storylines and characters are totally cliché: the wife who cries a lot, the angry teenage son, the parents who just don’t understand. The returning soldiers are all angry and violent and emotionally distant and completely lost. They’re homicidal or suicidal, and they’re within seconds of slipping over the edge.
In one scene, for instance, Tommy’s former boss (at a gun shop, of course) tells Tommy that he gave his job to someone else. After breaking the news, he asks if Tommy’s okay—because he doesn’t want Tommy “going psycho” on him or anything. While that’s probably supposed to attack the common misconceptions about returning soldiers, it’s exactly what the filmmakers make the characters out to be: a bunch of emotionally unstable head cases who are unfit to return to normal life.
Despite its good intentions, Home of the Brave is much too painful (and, sadly, laughable) to earn even the hint of a recommendation. If you really want to show your support of the troops, donate your ten bucks and skip the movie.
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