Return

Careful, subtle, artistic portrait of the inner conflicts and turmoil experienced by a woman soldier on her return home from war. From the beginning of her return to her family we see how there are things seriously troubling her that she herself can't put into words. We watch the external, behavioral effects of these psychological conflicts as she interacts with her husband and children who themselves have also been affected. Which war she returns from is not stated, clearly intentionally to show the viewer that this is not important. There is little external drama in this quiet, sensitive demonstration of the powerful psychological forces stimulated by military service in war, both in the service member and in her family. Liza Johnson gives us a movie that shows us a fictional character and her life yet has in every scene a ring of truth. This is an artistic achievement.

I can't say I've been wowed by this movie. Not everything was negative though, the acting was quite good, the story not so much. I get it's a drama and there is not a lot of action involved, and that doesn't really matter, but at one point you have to go somewhere with your story, but in this movie there isn't really an ending, or at least not a satisfying ending. It's too bad the story wasn't better because the whole cast was good. A woman suffering of post traumatic stress syndrom returning to her former life where she doesn't seem to fit in anymore, it's good material but to me it felt bland and unfinished. A missed opportunity.

Wow it is clear that this is Hollywood view and that not one person with creative input in this film has ever served. in the military at all, much less in combat.

It is really an insult to imply everyone's marriage is broken or that all of us suffer from PTSD, when the data show these are small outliers and the average marriage of service personnel is better than people who live in southern California.

A more or less unreleased little indie that, for the most part, is as generic as its forgettable title. However, it has one big thing going for it and that is the lead performance, from Freaks and Geeks star Linda Cardellini. While many of her co-stars on that one-season-wonder went on to become big stars, Cardellini has done so little. She was Velma in the Scooby Doo movies, for God's sake. She really knocks it out of the part here as a returning Iraq War veteran who can't re-adjust to normal life. Michael Shannon and John Slattery (of Mad Men fame) co-star, but neither has much to do. Cardellini owns every frame of the movie. The script is nothing special, but she makes it worthwhile. Certainly worth a look, especially if you loved Cardellini on Freaks and Geeks and want to see her shine.

RETURN (dir. Liza Johnson) Linda Cardellini delivers a mesmerizing performance as a woman who returns from a tour of duty in Iraq to find that her old life no longer fits. The film is deliberately and ominously paced as she discovers the truth about her prior existence. Her job is 'a waste of time' (it is, and it was), and her husband seems to have replaced her with an 'angst free' woman. It's not so much that Iraq had changed Kelli, but more that she now realizes that life can be so much more than what is offered in her rural, small town existence. Her friends and family members think that she might have seen devastating or particularly grisly scenes of carnage, yet her most unsettling memory seems to be witnessing a jet plane completely filled with rubber gloves. Her biggest and unstated realization is how shallow and pointless all of their lives really are. When things seem like they cannot get any worse, her husband initiates a custody battle over their two young daughters, and then she learns that she has been redeployed. The film is a stark and heartbreaking portrait of a woman who has been placed in a devastatingly untenable position. MUST SEE.