Taking Chance
Short description
Taking Chance follows Lieutenant Colonel Michael Strobl, a U.S. Marine Corps officer who volunteers to serve as military escort for the remains of Lance Corporal Chance Phelps, a nineteen-year-old Marine killed in Iraq. The task takes him from the Dover Air Force Base mortuary across the country to Phelps's hometown of Dubois, Wyoming, where the young man is to be buried. Along the way, Strobl oversees the formal procedures the military uses for returning fallen service members and meets the people who turn out to honor the procession. The story is based on Strobl's own account of the journey he made in 2004.
Ross Katz directed the film, his first time in the director's chair; he went on to direct Adult Beginners in 2014 and The Choice in 2016. Katz wrote the screenplay with Michael Strobl. Kevin Bacon stars as Strobl, heading a credited cast of twenty that includes Tom Aldredge, Blanche Baker, Guy Boyd and Gordon Clapp. The HBO television film runs just seventy-seven minutes.
Taking Chance holds a 6.8 rating on Rotten Tomatoes from seven critics, while audiences rate it somewhat higher, at 7.4 on IMDb from around 18,000 votes and 7.2 on TMDB from roughly 250 votes.
What's left behind the scenes
- The Ministry of Defense prohibited the dissemination of almost all information regarding the deaths of veterans between the Gulf War in 1991 and April 2009. Nevertheless, it was the military that came to the aid of the 'Volunteers' creative team, providing access to data on the formalities surrounding the farewell of fallen heroes on their final journey.
- When the characters played by Kevin Bacon and Blanche Baker exit the hangar in Minneapolis, a large aircraft belonging to American cargo airline Kalitta Air is visible in the background. In 2007, the US Congress voted on a bill prohibiting the transportation of the bodies of fallen service members to their families in the cargo holds of aircraft. Since then, such transportation has been carried out by small Kalitta Air planes.
- The film did not have a theatrical release in the US, instead going directly to HBO (a pay television network), despite not being made for television.
- In one episode, Kevin Bacon's character drives a car with a license plate from Montana's 57th district. The state of Montana is divided into only 56 counties.
- Near the beginning of the film, bodies are shown being unloaded in Dover, Delaware, during rain. The rain only falls near the tail of the plane, while the rest of the fuselage remains completely dry, as the sprinklers couldn't reach that far.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
