Home of the Brave

Home of the Brave follows a group of National Guard soldiers from Spokane in the days before and after their tour in Iraq. A medical unit is ambushed during what was meant to be one of its last missions, and several members are killed or wounded. Among the survivors are a surgeon haunted by what he witnessed, a single mother and teacher who lost a hand in the attack, a soldier who cannot shake the memory of shooting an Iraqi woman, and an infantryman whose closest friend died in the ambush. Once back in the United States, each of them struggles to resume ordinary life, and the distance between their old routines and what they carry with them proves hard to close.

The film is a drama directed by Irwin Winkler, who also produced it, from a screenplay by Mark Friedman. It is the seventh feature Winkler directed, arriving after De-Lovely in 2004. Samuel L. Jackson plays the surgeon William Marsh, with Jessica Biel as Vanessa Price, Christina Ricci as Sarah Schivino, and 50 Cent as Jamal Aiken; the credited cast runs to 32 names. Made for about 12 million dollars, the film sits in modest territory by the numbers that accompany it: a 4.2 out of 10 from 57 critics' reviews, against a 5.4 out of 10 on TMDB from 201 votes, and a 5.4 out of 10 on IMDb. Both sets of viewers land close to the middle, and the gap between the two is small.