Movie Review Thank You For your Service

Thank You for Your Service (2017)

Directed by Jason Hall

Written by Jason Hall 

Starring Miles Teller, Haley Bennett, Joe Cole, Amy Schumer, Scott Haze 

Release Date October 15th, 2017 

Thank You for Your Service is a deeply respectful and respectable movie about veterans and PTSD. The film stars Miles Teller as Staff Sgt. Adam Schumann who is just returning from Iraq from a traumatic third tour of duty. Having been praised for his unique ability for locating roadside mines, Adam’s last experience in Iraq was seeing a friend shot in the head and him having dropped that friend as he carried him down the steps of a building under fire by terrorists

The guilt and shame are overwhelming and demonstrate one of the many ways that PTSD can manifest in a soldier. Adam’s two closest friends, Billy Waller (Joe Cole) and Tausolo ‘Solo’ Aieti (Beulah Koale) have their own kinds of PTSD. For Billy, the trauma is waiting back at home where his fiancée has cleared out their apartment and left without telling him. For Solo, he’s suffering from post-concussion syndrome, PTSD with a deep effect on his memory.

PTSD takes so many different forms that it is impossible to come up with one catchall treatment as we find out when Adam and Solo attempt to navigate the Veterans Affairs system and find themselves unable to find help that isn’t weeks or months away. The VA is swamped with PTSD patients whose traumas are manifested in numerous different ways. That there is no cure for PTSD. There’s barely even a proper diagnosis. It’s no wonder our vets are eager to go back to combat; it makes more sense than the bureaucracy waiting back at home.

Thank You For Service never shies away from portraying the hurt and trauma that comes from PTSD and the betrayal soldiers feel after making incredible sacrifices for their country only to spend weeks wrapped in red tape when they go for help. Suicidal ideation is one of many symptoms of PTSD and much of that may simply stem from the hopeless, helpless feeling engendered in waiting in endless VA lines only to buried in paperwork and delays in treatment.

Find my full length review in the Serve Community on Vocal 

Movie Review Gran Turismo

Gran Turismo (2023) 

Directed by Neil Blomkamp 

Written by Jason Hall, Zach Baylin 

Starring Archie Medekwe, David Harbour, Orlando Bloom, Djimon Hounsou, Geri Halliwell 

Release Date August 25th, 2023 

Published August 22nd, 2023 

There is nothing particularly wrong with Gran Turismo. It's an occasionally rousing, occasionally emotional, sports movie. It's well acted, it's shot well, the special effects are terrific. So why don't I care about this based on a true story melodrama? It's odd, I can remember enjoying Gran Turismo while I watched it and now, as I sit to write about it, most of the movie has slipped away. I'm left with this sort of vague admiration for Gran Turismo but not much beyond that. I'm having to check and recheck notes that I made and go back to the film synopsis for help. Am I just getting old or did this movie just leave that little of an overall impression. 

Gran Turismo, according to my notes, stars Archie Medekwe as Gran Turismo videogame star player, Jann Mardenborough. Jann has long dreamed of becoming a race car driver but that particular track of profession, is not available to most people. Though the movie only glances in the direction of any kind of social conscience, it's clear that many drivers have had long time ties to family and corporate racing interests. Trying to independently become a race car driver, especially on the European circuit, is beyond merely a pipedream. 

The closest that Jann can come is spending most of his waking hours playing the game Gran Turismo, a real life hit videogame series. Created by Kazunori Yamauchi, Gran Turismo is a painstaking recreation of what it is like to race on European race tracks. Yamauchi dedicated years to capturing the cars, the tracks, pit crew experience, everything down to the minute pieces of the car, in order to create a racing simulator so lifelike, it feels like the real thing. I've never played Gran Turismo, I don't play many videogames, nothing against them, but I was really impressed by the glimpses of the game we get in this movie. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media

Movie Review American Sniper

American Sniper (2014) 

Directed by Clint Eastwood 

Written by Jason Hall 

Starring Sienna Miller, Bradley Cooper 

Release Date December 25th, 2014

Published December 21st, 2014

One scene in “American Sniper” wraps up who Chris Kyle truly is. Set atop a rooftop in Iraq, among a group of other snipers protecting a convoy, Chris Kyle spies a chance to kill a rival sniper. This rival sniper, a former Olympic shooting champion from Syria, has been picking off American soldiers from an incredible distance for some time now.

The rival sniper is about 1000 yards away and Chris can just barely make out his presence from a brief flash of light. The shot is nearly impossible but what makes the situation even more dangerous and compelling is that Kyle cannot make the shot without tipping off nearby insurgents to the presence of American soldiers on the rooftop.

Here is where Chris Kyle is truly revealed: will he take the shot and compromise his own safety and that of his fellow snipers for the chance to kill his ultimate rival? All at once we come to know Chris Kyle as competitive, dangerous, loyal to a fault, vengeful, protective, arrogant and devoted to a very particular cause: protecting the men on the ground.

Kyle takes the shot and remarkably, though 1000 meters away, he does take out his target. The shot then alerts the insurgents who quickly converge on the building. In this moment a new Chris Kyle is born, a vulnerable, frightened and remorseful man who in the midst of the coming chaos calls his wife to declare that he’s ready to come home. Bear in mind, in this moment, there is no guarantee that he will leave this rooftop.

Bradley Cooper infuses this scene with gut wrenching authenticity. Chris Kyle’s time as a soldier ends in this moment and the grief, relief, fear and catharsis arrive in waves. Director Clint Eastwood amps the scene with powerful, confident angles, quick cuts between Kyle, his wife back in Texas, an approaching sandstorm and the blur of faceless enemies rushing into the building.

The tension of this scene exhausting in the best possible way as we have been on a rollercoaster of emotion already and the scene plays like the last major climb and climactic drop. Many of us will never know the exhilarating fear brought about by actual life or death combat and this scene is likely as close as we will ever get.

Many critics have claimed that “American Sniper” is a jingoistic celebration of a warmonger. This dismissal of the film ignores the many conflicting emotions at play in the rooftop scenes. In the space of several minutes Chris Kyle is revealed as a man of great determination, skill and patriotism as well as a man who is quite vulnerable, dangerously competitive and arrogant and carrying enough guilt to have developed a death wish.

It’s not clear if Chris Kyle wants to die, the call to his wife seems like an indication of something to live for, but here he is initiating a situation that very likely will get him killed. That he is willing to die so that others may live is noble but the scene does not portray a noble sacrifice but rather a man in a fit of pique, defying orders with an agenda all his own. To this point, Chris Kyle has been a model soldier and yet he defies orders and likely got men killed in his single minded pursuit of his own goal.

Clint Eastwood and Bradley Cooper do not cower from the uglier side of Chris Kyle’s life in “American Sniper” and the rooftop sequence is a fine example of their complex and thoughtful take on his life. At every turn of “American Sniper” we in the audience are invited to see to Chris Kyle and make up our own mind whether we find him heroic or not. This is not hagiography, as the rooftop sequence indicates, this is one of the most raw and honest portrayals of the complexity of being a soldier ever put to screen.