The Veterans (2006)

Directed by: Sidney J. Furie | 89 minutes | thriller, war | Actors: Ally Sheedy, Bobby Hosea, Michael Ironside, Colin Glazer, Casper Van Dien, Sean Baek, Jim Codrington, Donald Burda

More than thirty years after Vietnam, there are many films set in and around this war. One, perhaps the best, ‘Apocalypse Now’ (1979), was not made until a few years after the end of the war, when the images were still fresh in the memory, but a certain distance and processing allowed a ‘ to paint an objective picture. This image has stayed with us all well, because ‘Apocalypse Now’ (the film is still mentioned in ‘The Veteran’) is engraved in our memory as a fierce film, about a war that is incomprehensible, or perhaps: every war is, from a human point of view, totally insane. This is the message that ‘The Veteran’ also wants to give us, of course. Just a little later and a little less intense.

Given the more recent situation in Iraq, the setting seems to work. The focus is on a man who returns to deal with his past. Slowly but surely something begins to dawn on you about a secret, or secrets, that have to become visible through flashbacks, which actually happens too slowly and is not felt. We see a lot but we build nothing. The characters have to hide too much from the script to get it exciting, but don’t show that tension themselves, a mistake that actually lies with the direction. At the same time, in the beginning we immediately get to hear what is about to happen, via a slightly too flat exposition, on a radio message, explaining who you are and what you are going to do in a recorder, a telephone conversation with your mother in which you say where you are. so that viewers at home know too. Would have really made the mystery big.

On two of the three important roles, there is also a lot to negotiate. Ray (Bobby Hosea) stays on the surface too much, we don’t see any edges, not even in the flashbacks and Sara Reid (Ally Sheedy) doesn’t get us either, because she uses too much quasi expression. Doc, on the other hand, is convincing. Michael Ironside shows that he has more to offer as an actor than the scolding villain he usually plays. He cannot save the film, but shows himself to be a real professional who deserves to play deeper roles, which apparently comes too little of it, or for which he gets too little recognition. Although he plays a confused alcoholic struggling with his past in ‘The Veteran’, he is the shining star of the film. At the end of the story, the long-promised denouements await us, one of which completes the story. The other secrets they should have told us, the viewers, a little earlier, because they would have given it the meaning and tension was missing until the end. Retroactively it makes up for something, but all those denouements in one heap mainly evoke a feeling of: “yes, I’d like to have another one like that.” More had lived here.