This movie stars Michelle Monaghan as Army Sergeant Maggie Swann, and her performance carries this movie. We have several young friends, male and female, in the military and this take opens your eyes to the difficulties.
The first 6 minutes of the movie shows Swann in action, in Afghanistan, as a medic. There is a tense scene where a soldier has an active device embedded into his side and Swann has to cut into him, in the field and without anesthetic, to remove it, possibly risking detonation.
That is her life, she is tough, she is good at it, she doesn't flinch.
But when she gets back to the states, to her post at Ft Bliss near El Paso, Texas, she finds life there almost harder to deal with. Her son was 3 1/2 when she left, now he is 5. He doesn't seem to remember her, and resists, but she doesn't want to leave him with her ex-husband and his fiancée. Plus she gets put in charge of training a new group of medics to be deployed in 6 to 9 months.
This movie has no easy answers, it shows how difficult military service, especially in times of war, can be on soldiers, males and female alike. Monaghan is nothing short of superb and looking every bit the part.
SPOILERS: She is told that her 'temporary' training assignment was changed and she will be deployed again. Instead she swings a change, 2 years in Korea, where she can take her son with her. But literally in the last hours the sergeant she vouched for to take her place had a breakdown of sorts, she realized the mission and the safety of soldiers hinged on it, so she accepted the deployment, and in the emotional penultimate scene she has to tell her son goodbye again, not knowing if she would return to him. The final scene shows her back in Afghanistan, wearing two watches on her arm, and noting it is her son's bedtime back in Texas.
The first 6 minutes of the movie shows Swann in action, in Afghanistan, as a medic. There is a tense scene where a soldier has an active device embedded into his side and Swann has to cut into him, in the field and without anesthetic, to remove it, possibly risking detonation.
That is her life, she is tough, she is good at it, she doesn't flinch.
But when she gets back to the states, to her post at Ft Bliss near El Paso, Texas, she finds life there almost harder to deal with. Her son was 3 1/2 when she left, now he is 5. He doesn't seem to remember her, and resists, but she doesn't want to leave him with her ex-husband and his fiancée. Plus she gets put in charge of training a new group of medics to be deployed in 6 to 9 months.
This movie has no easy answers, it shows how difficult military service, especially in times of war, can be on soldiers, males and female alike. Monaghan is nothing short of superb and looking every bit the part.
SPOILERS: She is told that her 'temporary' training assignment was changed and she will be deployed again. Instead she swings a change, 2 years in Korea, where she can take her son with her. But literally in the last hours the sergeant she vouched for to take her place had a breakdown of sorts, she realized the mission and the safety of soldiers hinged on it, so she accepted the deployment, and in the emotional penultimate scene she has to tell her son goodbye again, not knowing if she would return to him. The final scene shows her back in Afghanistan, wearing two watches on her arm, and noting it is her son's bedtime back in Texas.