This film is about a veteran struggling with PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) and trying to get back to normal life after serving two years in the war in Afghanistan. He and his wife are breaking up, as he has skipped out on appointments for help from the Veterans department and groups. Now he shows up in Kalamazoo, Michigan, for a new job as a tour guide in its aviation museum, called the Air Zoo.
On the first tour he leads, he notices a young observant woman, whom he also sees later around the museum. She doesn't tell him her name, and when he suggests "Michelle," she says that's a good name. As they talk, she seems to know a lot about him, and he wonders how that can be. Eventually, she tells him that she's his guardian angel.
Well, since this occurs in early December, and Nick is invited the home of the museum manager for Christmas, it becomes a Christmas movie. This isn't a star-studded cast of great actors, nor are the writers, the director and others well known or anywhere near the top of their fields. So, as one might expect, the screenplay is somewhat slow and uncertain, the acting is fairly amateurish, and it's a minor film all around. It's quite typical for these video films made just for sale or that are put out on the Internet.
In a way that's unfortunate, because the public could use at a very good film about veterans from modern warfare struggling with and recovering from PTSD. My five stars are partly for the effort to tackle this subject in a film, but more so for the very good presentation and scenes of the Air Zoo museum. It truly is a world-class aviation museum, on the order of other air and space museums I have visited - the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D. C.; the Blue Angels museum in Pensacola, Florida; the SAC Museum near Ashland, Nebraska; and the Neil Armstrong Air & Space Museum at Wapakoneta, Ohio.
