Returning to the new normal

When you watch a lot of movies, you grow thankful for the things they don’t do. Thank You for Your Service, a film about Iraq War veterans struggling to fit back into civilian life, does not feature an ill-advised heist or a messy love triangle or a scene where someone drinks too much and gets into a bar fight. It does not plaster the screen with American flags, or include a civilian whose heartfelt gratitude makes everyone smile. It doesn’t even devote much screen time to Iraq.

And it doesn’t waste any time. The traumatic event that will haunt Sgt. Adam Schumann (Miles Teller) for the rest of the film (and, this being based on a true story, for the rest of his life) is dispensed with in scene 1. Scene 2 finds Schumann and the rest of his platoon on a plane, heading home.

In his aisle is Tausolo Aieti (Beulah Koale), whose proximity to an explosion so scrambled his circuits he can no longer remember the day of the week; and Will Waller (Joe Cole), whose fiancée pulled up stakes without so much as a Dear John while he was overseas.

The three men will remain in touch when they get back to the States, but each has a different, sometimes tragic path of coming to grips with what they went through in the war and what they have to face back home. For Schumann, this includes a baby son he hardly knows, and a wife (Haley Bennett) determined to get him to open up about what he’s going through. Aieti also has a child on the way, but keeps repeating: “I just want to get back to my unit.” And: “The army saved my life.”

That may be, but U.S. Veterans Affairs is now ruining it. The screenplay, adapted from David Finkel’s book by first-time director Jason Hall (he also adapted American Sniper) is a stinging rebuke of how the nation treats its returning soldiers. Hall fills his VA offices with caring people, but the system is clearly broken. (The film is set in 2007, but there’s no indication that things have improved.) Aieti has to jump through hoops to prove he was the victim of an attack after the army can’t find the right records. Schumann points out that a six- to nine-month wait for counselling might be longer than the lifespan of a suicidal vet.

But the film remains watchable because there’s real drama and camaraderie behind its message. Teller in particular does a great job of portraying a man who is drowning in guilt yet convinced he can tough it out. When his wife (Bennett’s character is also nicely fleshed out) finds a benefits form in which he admits to suicidal thoughts, he tells her he only put that down so they’d approve his application. The look in her eyes says she wants to believe him. So do we. But the reality (here in Canada as well as the U.S.) tells a different story. ∂∂∂½

REALITY (HERE IN CANADA AS WELL) TELLS A DIFFERENT STORY.

Haley Bennett and Miles Teller in a scene from Thank You for Your Service, which follows a group of U.S. soldiers returning from Iraq who struggle to integrate back into family and civilian life. FRANÇOIS DUHAMEL / DREAMWORKS PICTURES VIA THE...