An average movie

It is rather surprising that it took Kimberly Peirce almost 10 years after the amazing ‘Boys don’t cry’ to finally come up with a new directing effort (apparently, she did have some other movie projects but they all fell through). Honestly, this one could have been pretty good. Indeed, the material was quite interesting and there was a strong cast (Ryan Phillippe, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Channing Tatum, Timothy Olyphant, Ciarán Hinds, Abbie Cornish) but, somehow, it didn’t really fly. The first thing that bothered me where those MTV style edited sequences. They popped up a couple of times during the movie, completely at random, and they really clashed with the tone of the rest of the movie. Then, there was this peculiar love triangle involving Ryan Phillippe, Channing Tatum and Abbie Cornish, a love triangle which should have been either dropped or properly developed. Then, from the moment Phillippe goes AWOL, the plot became rather random, in order to show almost everything involved in such a war (the parents who lost their boy, the wounded soldier, the stop-lossed soldier on the run, the peace activist helping the soldiers to go to Canada and even the Mexican border for a few seconds). It felt pretty awkward and not really subtle. Still, in spite of its flaws, I still think it is worth a look though, especially if you are interested in this war.

6/10