I'm not for the war in the Iraq, and I certainly haven't wanted to see the string of many Iraq films coming out in the last year. Home Of The Brave really stood out for some reason, but since it failed in limited release last Christmas, and then again this summer when it tried a second release, it never did come to theaters locally. So I waited for the DVD, which I just finished moments ago. The film got bashed across the board, and obviously nobody else wanted to see it, from looking at it's box office take. I was somehow still compelled to watch it, and just like I hoped, it was actually quite good. However, it is very flawed, and it probably could have been a lot better as an HBO miniseries, cause the story feels way too rushed. You're introduced to these characters, most of which, I cared about. Even 50 Cent, who people here have HUGE issues with, played a character that I believed could be realistically that conflicted. Which makes it a pretty good performance to be able to do that. The film does have it's clichés, and it does get rather preachy at times. There's one scene in particular, which takes place in a movie theater, that goes a little bit over the top, where it becomes very obvious that the writer really had strong opinions to give out, which sort of took away a bit of the reality. It didn't seem to have a clear opinion on how it felt about the war, but I think that was probably the point. I'm generally not into war films, but besides the obvious war scenes, it's hard to call it a war film, cause really, it's a character study about how people who'd be heroes to a few, but to everyone else they are just another man or woman, trying to live their life. I really enjoyed this film.
Review of Home of the Brave
