Man Down (15)

Verdict: Cack-handed military drama ★★✩✩✩

AMERICA’S apparently cavalier treatment of its war veterans, 20 of whom reportedly commit suicide every day, is the subject of this film, just as it was of Ang Lee’s recent Billy Lynn’s Long Half-Time Walk.

Alas, neither picture has done justice to an important story, and in both instances directorial cack-handedness is to blame.

The director and co-writer here is Dito Montiel, who if nothing else has assembled a fine cast, led by Shia LaBeouf as a battle-scarred u.S. marine returning from Afghanistan, with Kate Mara as his long-suffering wife and Gary Oldman as an army psychiatrist.

Sadly, their talents are mostly wasted. This is a woefully confused and confusing film.

Still, LaBeouf gives a characteristically intense performance as Gabriel Drummer, who is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

If Montiel had chosen to tell Gabriel’s story in a coherent way, the result could have been compelling. Bewilderingly, though, the film lurches from one chapter of Gabriel’s life to another, and back again.

So, in no particular order, we see him at home bonding with his wife and cutesy blond son; we see him going through hell in Afghanistan; we see him reliving a harrowing ‘incident’ with Oldman’s shrink; and we see him striding through a war-ravaged America looking for his family, seemingly after jihadists have wrought terrible carnage with chemical weapons.

Man Down doesn’t engage the interest nearly as much as it should, because every time you feel even half-invested in what’s happening on screen, there’s a cut to another time and place and you have to start all over again. A shame.