This turned out to be better than I thought it would be. On a semi-related note, I can't believe it's been almost two years since I put this in my queue as part of the 2010 Oscar Nominations. Jeebus. It wasn't even at the top of the DVD list, either, just the top of my Instant. It was number 16 on the DVDs. So, yeah, not as bad as I thought it would be. I'm fairly critical of movies that depict the Army, seeing as how I was in the Army, and even more so of how veterans are portrayed.
SSG Will Montgomery (Ben Foster) is a soldier recovering from wounds incurred from a roadside bomb in Afghanistan with 3 months left on his contract when he is assigned to the Casualty Notification Team under CPT Stone (Woody Harrelson). These are the representatives of the Army who go to the next of kin and inform them of their loved one's death. There are a lot of shitty jobs in the Army. This is one of them. People react differently to death, sometimes violently, and it's the Notification Team's job to convey the information calmly and with sympathy but not get emotionally involved. Montgomery finds the line of involvement blurring when he gives a notification to a woman (Samantha Morton) and then starts dating her.
It's a good script. Some of the scenes which seems a little pointless are accurate representations of the pointlessness of most of our activities. It's real because it's meaningless. The violence, the alcoholism, the inability to really connect with people after deployment, it's all there. I don't say this often, but it's a story that should be told.
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