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No consensus yet.
All Critics (21) | Top Critics (9) | Fresh (17) | Rotten (4)
Director Heather Courtney's emotional and engrossing portrait of America's bravest. Nov 10, 2011 | Full Review…
Director Heather Courtney's emotional and engrossing portrait of America's bravest.
Steven Snyder
A work that's less urgent and involving than its intense subject matter might have dictated. Oct 7, 2011 | Rating: 2.5/5 | Full Review…
A work that's less urgent and involving than its intense subject matter might have dictated.
Gary Goldstein
Courtney avoids all political posturing here, something rare in modern war documentaries. These are the guys, American kids. This is the war, it's awful. And this is what happens. In your own backyard. Sep 30, 2011 | Rating: B+ | Full Review…
Courtney avoids all political posturing here, something rare in modern war documentaries. These are the guys, American kids. This is the war, it's awful. And this is what happens. In your own backyard.
Tom Long
The documentary sometimes feels like the work of a filmmaker who began with a preconceived story and wasn't quite sure what to do with the one she actually got. Sep 15, 2011 | Full Review…
The documentary sometimes feels like the work of a filmmaker who began with a preconceived story and wasn't quite sure what to do with the one she actually got.
In its compassionate, modest gaze, the real cost of distant political decisions is softly illuminated, as well as the shame of a country with little to offer its less fortunate young people than a ticket to a battlefield. Sep 9, 2011 | Rating: 4/5
In its compassionate, modest gaze, the real cost of distant political decisions is softly illuminated, as well as the shame of a country with little to offer its less fortunate young people than a ticket to a battlefield.
Jeannette Catsoulis
To see these children of waitresses, salon workers and fathers on disability burdened because they stepped up is humanizing and heartbreaking. Sep 9, 2011 | Rating: 3/5 | Full Review…
To see these children of waitresses, salon workers and fathers on disability burdened because they stepped up is humanizing and heartbreaking.
Joe Neumaier
One of the more valuable and compassionate entries to date in the ever-expanding catalog of documentaries inspired by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Nov 17, 2011 | Rating: 3.5/4 | Full Review…
One of the more valuable and compassionate entries to date in the ever-expanding catalog of documentaries inspired by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
John Beifuss
Courtney has crafted a visual tour de force as she links the idyllic small-town existence of the all-for-one warriors with the arid, untameable terrain of ugly conflict. Nov 2, 2011 | Rating: 4.5/5 | Full Review…
Courtney has crafted a visual tour de force as she links the idyllic small-town existence of the all-for-one warriors with the arid, untameable terrain of ugly conflict.
S. James Wegg
The young men at the center of the film have obnoxious personalities and it takes a great deal of patience to follow their journeys. Sep 22, 2011 | Rating: 1.5/5
The young men at the center of the film have obnoxious personalities and it takes a great deal of patience to follow their journeys.
Phil Hall
An understated, delicately anthropological real-life coming-of-age tale. Not for all tastes, but these stories, alas, are the new back stories of many individual American tragedies and triumphs yet to be written. Sep 17, 2011 | Rating: B | Full Review…
An understated, delicately anthropological real-life coming-of-age tale. Not for all tastes, but these stories, alas, are the new back stories of many individual American tragedies and triumphs yet to be written.
Brent Simon
Intriguing, personal war docu, about small-town soldiers stuck between boyhood and manhood; a good companion piece to the fictionalized The Deer Hubter, to which this work makes reference. Sep 13, 2011 | Rating: A- | Full Review…
Intriguing, personal war docu, about small-town soldiers stuck between boyhood and manhood; a good companion piece to the fictionalized The Deer Hubter, to which this work makes reference.
Emanuel Levy
A low key but powerful expose' of the lingering effects of war---on a most personal level. Sep 12, 2011 | Rating: 8/10 | Full Review…
A low key but powerful expose' of the lingering effects of war---on a most personal level.
Ron Wilkinson
Heather Courtney has the best of intentions, but her bias is unabashedly evident.
Super Reviewer
Moving and insightful doc follows a group of childhood friends from Michigan who join the National Guard and are deployed to Afghanistan. No grand political statements here, no melodrama or manipulation, just a simple and haunting portrait of friends in war, and a powerful portrait of its damaging effects upon their return.
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