Nothing is easy
Mike is a marine who is coming home to spend 96 hours with his family before he ships off to Iraq for at least a year. He goes back to a town that knew him prior to the corps and one that doesn’t know him very well after the fact. Strange to his friends and his family, Mike has to cope with his life and say goodbye quickly before leaving. The other hard part to his short 96 hour story is that he has to leave behind a girl named Cristina, whom he just met and has quickly become attached to.
In 1997, I had to say goodbye to my best friend since 10th grade (Brian) who was shipped off to different places via the Army. Having known him for so long, and been a super nerd with him in my high school programming class (hey, how do you think this madness of a website started?), I knew him very well. I knew what type of personality he had, how he liked to irritate his parents and what made him happy the most. When he came back from training camp he was a changed man. His nerdy days had left him, every aspect of my best friend had changed; it was incredibly tough to deal with, as I had become an outsider. In the early 2000’s, after 9/11, he was quickly shipped off to Iraq for an extended duty. Thankfully he survived, he came back stateside and he got married to the girl of his dreams (much love to you Heather!). The point of this story? This movie truly does portray a boy leaving his town and coming back a changed person, even a stranger. This is exactly how it happens and this is how people surround them and this is how people react to the change.
Now, with that said, the movie completely over-dramatizes the situation. I know that sounds cold and shallow, but in wartime, and especially when it comes to Marines, you can only expect people who join the corps to head over to help fight the war. The fact that Mike is too scared to tell his parents and best friend is nearly laughable. They should know where he is headed before he opens his lips. They should also react as if they expected this to happen. This plot point of the film, which was the driving force for the story, really didn’t work very well. It is as if the director and writers were trying to draw a large amount of drama from something so unrealistic. Military folks don’t beat around the bush with this sort of thing and neither do their parents. When someone joins the military they have to expect to go to war; especially during wartime. Sure no one wants to see their son/daughter get shipped off to a foreign country to potentially get killed, but they have to expect this once their sons/daughters sign up for the job. The amount of animosity and rejection from friends/family that Mike receives in the movie is way too dramatic to believe. This really did hurt the film tremendously and didn’t suspend my disbelief for one second.
With the major foundation of the story pretty much cracked, I did really like the chemistry between Mike and Cristina. Cannon’s gentle approach with his character helped sell the love he felt towards Melonie Diaz’s Cristina (who is just super-cute). Their scenes together were the best part of the film and probably represented what a soldier would do with his/her love if they only had 96 hours to spend together. When onscreen they both brought a great deal of love and affection, which simply helped sell the idea of their short Shakespearean love (face it folks, it was a tragedy to begin with; of course, that made it so damn good). I really bought into that portion of the film and praise it.
In the end, I didn’t hate the film, I just wish that a little bit more research would have been done on how these things go down. It’s incredibly easy to assume that just because someone is going to get shipped off to another country via the military that everyone around them will react with resentment, guilt or small bits of hatred. I have seen more situations with military folk than I care to recall and almost none had this much drama. I would have also like to see a bit more of Mike’s family and less of his friend Jake. Nothing against Matt O’Leary (who plays Jake), but Mike needed more time with his family for that portion of the story to develop. There should have been more of relationship established with his mom (who we didn’t get the backstory about), his sister and Tom Sizemore’s Dale (need more info about this guy — why does Mike hate him?). Outside of over-dramatizing, this is the other problem; character development simply wasn’t there. Don’t blame the actors, simply blame a script and a director.
To help make this movie go down just a bit smoother, the features are as follows:
– Leave in Bakersfield: Behind the Scenes of American Son
– Feature Audio Commentary
– Deleted Scenes
The features are average to good. I really enjoyed the audio commentary as it provided a clearer insight to what they wanted to do with the film (and what direction they were shooting for). The behind-the-scenes is promotional, yet informative. Not bad for a film that wasn’t particularly graceful.
