Home of the Brave |  | Director: Irwin Winkler
Actors: Samuel L. Jackson, Jessica Biel, Christina Ricci, Brian Presley, 50 Cent
Category: DVD
This item is no longer available
Rating:  45 reviews
Format: NTSC
Languages: Arabic (Original Language), English (Original Language), Spanish (Original Language)
Rating: R (Restricted)
ASIN: B00005JPDX
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
The fact that Home of the Brave is about soldiers coming home from a war that isn't even over is just one of the things that's off in this film; director Irwin Winkler and screenwriter Mark Friedman's 2006 tale of the problems faced by the men and women returning from Iraq is also hampered by thoroughly predictable storytelling, sub-par acting, and sometimes painfully on-the-nose dialogue, reducing what could have been a provocative and challenging effort into so much TV movie fodder. When Army medic Will Marsh (Samuel L. Jackson, who does his best to rise above the level of the material) and soldiers Vanessa Price (Jessica Biel) and Tommy Yates (Brian Presley) return to Spokane, Washington, major readjustment problems loom, mostly due to a chaotic ambush in a small Iraqi town (occurring less than two weeks before they were to be sent home, the incident is so unsurprising that anyone could have seen it coming). Will and his angry teenage son wage their own war, while Dad takes to the bottle; Vanessa's learning to cope with a prosthetic hand, while Tommy's grieving over the best buddy who died in the ambush and the loss of his job, girlfriend, and self-respect. Those matters and the clichéd, unconvincing way in which they're handled, along with the film's refusal to take a strong stand either for or against the war, obscure the potentially much more interesting issues. Are these soldiers patriots, or merely pawns? Were they doing their righteous duty by serving in this conflict, or were they victims sent off to suffer and perhaps die by a bunch of men in suits who never saw a minute of combat themselves? Other home-from-war films, from 1946's The Best Years of Our Lives to 1978's Coming Home to 1989's Born on the Fourth of July, have dealt with these and other issues a good deal more effectively than the earnest and well-intentioned but not very compelling Home of the Brave. --Sam Graham
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 45
HomeOfDaBrav January 14, 2010
H. Saez (Maspeth, NY)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I really don't have much to say about the movie, bought it cause it was bluray and the price was right. I would say it was a so, so movie. It lacked in regards to the point it was trying to make in regards to veterans coming back and the issue's they face trying to deal with beingback home...
Doom, Gloom and Heaviness January 11, 2010
Calamity Jane
After being ambushed and badly wounded on a humanitarian mission in Iraq, US soldiers return home, their lives forever altered by war. They struggle to build on what they once had, but find that nothing is as they thought it was.
Sadly, this movie focuses on tears, not victories, and on self-pity, not the pride that comes from liberating the oppressed. The film's foreboding atmosphere is grossly oppressive. There are no comic breaks, no bits of laughter to balance the anger, no lighthearted moments to cut the grimness. The film just trudges forward, offering no relief whatsoever from the darkness.
The message, whether intended or not, is that U.S. soldiers can't handle war. It turns them into unstable men and women who teeter on the edge of madness.
I thought the acting was pretty good, even from Samuel Jackson whom I normally don't like. He wasn't his usual flat self.
Had Hollywood added some lightness, and cut out some of the self-pity, it could have been a great film. But it's heaviness killed it for me. I felt strangely depressed after viewing this movie.
As for the political digs, they didn't belong either, but the Hollywood left will always have it's way when it comes to that.
It's a hard movie to rate, so I'll give it a liberal three stars, even though it probably deserves two.
 Inaccurate, left wing slanted, anti-soldier crap January 8, 2010
Mike Edelstein (Ft Polk, LA, USA)
Within the first 20 minutes I knew that this would be an overall terrible movie.
The "war" aspect of it is EXTREMELY inaccurate....M-16A2s currently in use are NOT fully automatic, a small squad of three soldiers would not go running from building to building nor EVER pursue 2 individuals through alleyways for hundreds of meters, and they would definitely NEVER leave a wounded soldier alone and say "Don't worry a medic is on it's way", and in an ambush two unarmored vehicles, or any for that matter, would split off the main group and drive off on their own. All this happens within 10 minutes of each other. As a currently soldier, I wanted to throw my size 10 boot through my TV.
And then comes the main point of this movie (wait, is there even a point to this nonsensical crap?) which is their return home and struggles with PTSD. Sadly, the American public is overall blind to what PTSD truly is, and this movie doesn't help. Not every soldier, even those with PTSD, struggle with their lives, violence, and alcoholism. It seems this movie was written by anti-American, anti-soldier, bitter individuals with a grudge against the Army. It portrays them as hopeless losers who can't function in society at all. So, sadly, this movie continues to add to the stigma of the wounded.
Aside from people like Mark Cuban and Stephen King, who think all soldiers are murders and rapists or uneducated idiots (seriously, look at what either of these two say!) I can't think of anyone who would watch this movie and enjoy it in the slightest. Even the movie Stop Loss, made by MTV of all companies, was far more accurate in depicting PTSD.
Premise Good, Execution Bad December 29, 2009
Michael Griswold (Rockford, USA)
The premise of this movie is intriguing : A group of soldiers ambushed while on a humanitarian mission in Iraq, struggle to adjust to life back home in the United States. But somewhere along the way everything just falls flat between the writing and/or the acting, it seems to devolve into an anti-war movie. Which would not be bad or wrong, because I could understand were soldiers would begin to question the necessity or reasoning of a war, were they were injured, but the reactions seemed forced like these actors are articulating the views of writers rather than that of actual characters, but i'm not quite sure where to put the fault writing or acting.
Dumb Movie December 27, 2009
Ashley Norris (Houston, TX)
This movie was stupid and unrealistic. Don't waste your money on this garbage. Horrible acting!!
Showing reviews 1-5 of 45
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