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Home of the Brave

Military drama doesn't do honor to anything

By Brett Buckalew

January 19, 2007

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You don’t get much closer to the dictionary definition of the word “tasteless” than “Home of the Brave,” a drama that trivializes the hot-button issue of U.S. soldiers returning home from service in the Iraq war by portraying it with the melodramatic overkill of a bad soap opera and the bargain-basement production values and acting of ‘70s porn. (At least we’re spared the cheesy synthesizer music!)

All four of the characters at the center of the film's exploration of post-battlefield trauma come off as nothing but thinly defined types. There’s a medic (Samuel L. Jackson) whose simmering rage drives away his picture-perfect family; a female soldier (Jessica Biel) who loses an arm and gains a chip on her shoulder; a private (Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson) whose gruffness hides his regret over shooting an innocent bystander; and a surly loner (newcomer Brian Presley) unable to deal with the death of his comrade and best friend (Chad Michael Murray).

It takes just a glimpse at those actors’ names to give an idea of how incompetent the movie’s treatment of a serious subject is. A rapper (50 Cent) who emotes through monotonous mumbling; two alumni of teen network celebrated only for their mannequin looks; and, in Presley, an untested novice who comes off like the poor man’s Paul Walker (as if Walker were a rich man’s anything!).

It’s easy for Sam "The Man" Jackson to dominate in such company, but even he gets stuck with humiliating scenes like one in which he drunkenly forces Latino landscapers to join his family for a holiday dinner. There's an obligatory “I’ve had it with these muthafuckin’ snakes”-type badass quip (in this case, in reference to an anti-war t-shirt, “Buck Fush? Buck you, you son of a bitch!”), but the mere notion of stopping a sober message movie cold to allow for a campy wisecrack sums up all that’s awful about “Home.”

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