Even the most adamantly anti-war movies about American soldiers returning from Vietnam—Hal Ashby's Coming Home (1978) and Oliver Stone's Born on the 4th of July (1989)—redeemed their mangled, embittered grunts through the love of good women, devoted parents, political resistance, or all of the above. You can't pin that kind of ending on the Iraq War, and not just because there's no uplift in sight. For one thing, American involvement in the war has not generated enough visible political resistance to call a movement. For another, the past few years have taught us too much about the effects of battlefield trauma on Vietnam and Iraq War veterans alike—regardless of family support—to allow us the comfort of misty-eyed rehab fantasies. Which may be why, even as tough-minded documentaries about Iraq pile up in the art houses, Hollywood continues to tiptoe around the war or shift the focus (see the upcoming, horribly jingoistic The Kingdom) from American culpability onto... More >>>