Director David Nutter's only major film to date is a moving account of mid-eighties America that's interesting on two counts. One, in that it's a very serious look at the recurrent nightmares that haunted the lives of the country's Vietnam veterans and two in that it takes two players whose looks might otherwise limit them, and really gives them a chance to act. Neither Don Johnson nor Lisa Blount lets their director down. Their anguished performances in a key scene almost rival those of Jane Fonda and Jon Voight in Coming Home. The film itself is slow to take a grip on you, but its sincerity shines through, even in the uncomfortably handled scenes of the separate psychiatric clinics attended by the veterans and their wives. Dialogues between Johnson and fellow sequences are more rather than less effective for obviously being shot on a fairly minimal budget. It's a decent attempt to make a valid social statement within an entertainment framework, without stepping too far into the bog of maudlin depression that lies beyond.


©ipc tx. Film content from TVTimes