tvsterling
How to begin. First, the good. I agree with others that Bruce Willis & Emily Lloyd were excellent. Most early Bruce is that awful smirk or nothing. I think Miss Lloyd was actually better as the girl. The movie is a sincere attempt to cover the ground of the Vietnam thing but all it really ends up doing is wallowing in a more varied assortment of stereotypes than usual. This is nice vicarious fun for those who were not involved. As far as I can tell I'm the only Vietnam ERA veteran to comment (not a combat veteran thank god). I like to flatter myself by thinking that I can comment in some measure for them. We are veterans of an ERA not a war. Most of them (the combat veterans) probably can't stand to watch let alone comment. This last bit is what really makes me hate this movie in spite of the good part above so listen up. At the most emotional part of the movie where Willis is getting teary eyed at the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial with the music track building to a soft, emotional crescendo what does Mr Willis place beside the Bronze Star Medal at the wall? That's right he places (reverently) a pack of Camel cigarettes. This is what's known as a 'placement'. For those who don't know this means that the cigarettes are a paid commercial message like a spot on TV. I have to admit this is the most professional, artful, perfectly done placement I have ever seen. So good in fact that it becomes almost invisible even though it's right in front of you. A classic placement, really one for the textbooks. Also totally ruthless. It takes a third rate filmmaker like me to spot it properly & reveal it for what it is. This is beyond disrespect. Mr Willis character should have urinated on the wall instead.
brown_blonde
I did not grow up in the Vietnam era, and instead, my education on the subject has been limited to the last week of history class when the teacher would throw in a couple of words about Vietnam, usually being content to proclaim that the war was an ugly loss that we should all just forget.I think that is a serious threat these days--people forget, and others like in my generation just don't have a clue, as to what went through these soldiers. This film does a fine job of relaying that. We feel the pain of Emmett who has had to suppress his feelings about Vietnam. We see how the wounds of war are not only skin deep and battlefield-limited: they are the scars that are carried within.Equally refreshing is the point-of-view of the unsung hero, the survivors. In this case the we see the war's impact on Sam, whose father died before she was born. 18 years after his death, in present day (1989), the audience is allowed to see the remaining impressions that a war leaves, and the difficulty of finding closure in a war that everyone wanted to forget.This is a film that ought to be seen because it depicts war from so many new points of view and in a way that is relatable to those of us who will never be able to comprehend the actual battlefield. See it, you won't regret it.
wuxmup
It's easy to see why so few people seem to have connected with this underrated movie. There's no nudity, no violence, no killing, no superstars chewing up the scenery. It is, instead, a quiet, maybe too slow-moving, film about a teenage girl at the cusp of womanhood trying to learn about what Vietnam had been like for her father, who was killed there. She also begins to see her ex-G.I. uncle clearly, for the first time, as a survivor of something terrible. In Country is about the Vietnam War only as in the sense that it's also about a family's history whose impact bridges the generations. It's less about events than it is about becoming a grown-up in an America that has a sixty-second attention span and a fifteen-minute memory. Emily Lloyd, who you'd never guess is English, does a beautifully sensitive job in the starring role, and Bruce Willis, as her uncle, turns in a very fine, very dignified performance.
jaybozwel
Critics and friends have reacted variously to this film, but I found it very, very good. The characters are entirely believable, but the real pay-off for hanging in there with them through all the vagaries of their existence and problems (a number of them are messed up by their experiences in Vietnam -- this film came out just as there was a resurgence in post-traumatic stress syndrome among vets) comes with the way the film reaches a resolution at the end. A quiet, understated scene beautifully underscored by the excellent music of James Horner. I would rank this film very high on my "I give thanks that I got to see this" list.
AD
