Friday is date night for Becky (my wife) and I. Tonight we decided to get a pizza and watch a movie at home. Since she made me watch The Bucket List, I got to choose the movie this time around. I like films that make you both think and feel something. Home of the Brave succeeded in doing both.
Towards the end, it takes on a propaganda feel that I resented. Other than that, I thought it was a fantastic movie. It tells the Iraq war story from a perspective we don’t normally hear. It looks at the ordinary people who are there fighting and the battle they have integrating back into society. My father is a war veteran so I could relate in part to some of the struggles the film highlights.
Having said that, I dislike the way Hollywood seems incapable of seeing the world from a perspective other than that of America. If you’re going to make a film about how ordinary people’s lives are moved by this war, surely it should be from the perspective of the Iraqis. That’s the story I want to hear.
Still, were this movie a photograph, it would be a high resolution close up. A very real, raw picture that gets behind the guards that people normally put up. That’s its beauty – you get so close to the characters that you feel you could touch them.
I still resent that war. I would be tempted to wear a shirt written Buck Fush (watch the movie). But after watching it, I really hope that America treats its veterans better than the treatment you see in this movie. To that end, the makers definitely get their point across.
I’m in awe at the power of film to communicate.
Tsuro 