Causeway (2022)

Nominated for Best Supporting Actor    You know how some movies are fun and made for entertainment and some just seem to be made to spark Discourse?  Guess which kind this is.

Lynsey (Jennifer Lawrence) is an Army veteran sent home to New Orleans to recover from a Traumatic Brain Injury.  She befriends James (Brian Tyree Henry), a mechanic, as she slowly begins to pull her life back together.  Her plan is to get well enough to re-enlist and re-deploy despite her trauma, because continuing to live her pre-Army life is worse than the possibility of death and dismemberment.

There is absolutely a story to be told here about how low-income and minority families are specifically targeted to serve in the military as a "way out" of their situations.  I'm not sure this is it, though.  There's just not a lot here.  Don't get me wrong, a 90-minute Oscar nominee is great.  But I feel like this could have been a short instead of a feature.  It meanders, adds in a wholly unnecessary scene that points to romance when platonic would have been more interesting, and lingers on Lawrence's dead expression an unjustifiable number of times.  Henry is good here but I've seen him better.  

If you hate yourself, it's a decent double feature with The Hurt Locker.

Causeway is currently streaming on Apple+.