Army brat here. Military kids are only allowed to cry on two occasions - the day Daddy leaves to go to war and the day the two soldiers show up to tell you he isn't coming home. If Daddy comes home crazy (or Mom goes crazy while he's gone), the kids take the beatings for it. But they don't cry.
Meanwhile, it's life as usual and the kids hope the beatings don't become "family annihilation." Then some one they know (in our case, it was the Army psychologist down the street) comes home and kills everyone because, in the way war has taught him to think, killing his wife and kids is a kindness. He's just protecting them from the psychic pain he feels every minute of every day.
No, this isn't "Cowboys and Aliens." (And it isn't "woke" Hollywood. The American military is multi colored and so are the people who work as parole officers). Give the whining a rest. Embrace the reality of how we leave our heroes after Halliburton gets the oil contract.
This is about what happens when a man is used up by war, and the same people who wanted him to die for his country want to kill him. To be fragile and lost is to be dangerous. It's easier to throw him away than fix him.
PTSD - it kills people every day.
Do you know the feeling you have after you have been in a car wreck? Every stop at a light feels like you will be rear ended. Every car looks a little too close. Driving too fast becomes terrifying.
Now imagine that feeling building every day for ten trips to war. Imagine that anxiety building every day until it becomes more normal to you than a trip to the store.
Malik wants his boys back. He goes to get them. He takes them to the American desert, but his mind is still in the desert of war. And now his boys are with him.
We do this to soldiers every day. We do this to the children of soldiers every day.
The thing is that the children of soldiers know that PTSD isn't Daddy. It's what the war did to Daddy.
It's the real horror here, not the alien invasion. And it hurts my heart that most of the viewers can't see it,
But, guess what? Love wins.
