The Dry Land

I am a combat Veteran who was seriously wounded in Baghdad, Iraq on April 26, 2004. I had the opportunity to view The Dry Land at the Dallas International Film Festival in April this year. I think the movie does an excellent job portraying some of the issues that may occur when a combat Veteran comes home. Each one of us has a different experience of war and react differently when we come back home and try to fit back into normalcy. It can be difficult to accept that life back home may be different then prior to our deployment and the fact that our friends and family view us differently too. I think The Dry Land is spot on in every aspect of the movie and I want to thank all of the actors & actresses for their involvement and especially the Director and Screenwriter Ryan Piers Williams.

This Film is recommended for those who want to find out about PTSD and don't have a clue what this thing is, just that returning Soldiers suffer from this "Disease". Problem is after viewing this almost unbearably Melodramatic and manipulative Movie you might start developing symptoms of your own. It is that depressing.

Do we really need a Cancerous Mother, a traumatized, possible cheating Wife, a job in a Slaughterhouse with graphic bloodletting, a paraplegic Comrade who lets go a ridiculous metaphor, insensitive Family Members and co-workers, a standoffish and selfish Friend from his Platoon in Iraq, all to illustrate in-adaptability? There are more understated, over the top inclusions. This is all so heavy handed while pretending not to be.

This is blunt, pounding away without consideration for even the slightest bit of elation to enter this exercise in despair. If you are hit in the head enough times, even with a soft object, the result is a numbness. So it defeats the purpose to inspire awareness to the subject at hand and tragically the audience becomes Collateral Damage.

A ponderous message-movie that is pretty-much all drama (there is very little "lite" here). The Dry Land is a story of an Iraq war vet returning home to rural western Texas to the loving arms of his wife (America Ferrera -- TV's "Ugly Betty", Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants) only to realize he cannot make things "right" in his mind with what occurred on the other side of the world.

He meets fellow soldiers and friends and tries to make peace; but the film depicts the folly of war. None of the actors do a poor job on this film and the subject matter is important. The Dry Land is a film one hates to criticize or put-down as I am afraid the criticism will be misconstrued. My problem(s) with the film are not the war or the actors on the screen ... this is simply an "average film" from an un-proved director (this is Ryan Piers Williams' first full-length production).

Humans aren't made to be killing machines without something inside each of us changing. For a brief time, it felt as if this was going to be yet another retread of the Americanized version of the Danish film Brothers; but it eventually steered itself into a different direction which was good. Saying that -- there really isn't much else to discuss about this quiet film.

Like it's title suggests ... the story doesn't meander like a river -- it is just all-out and flat. There is an expanse of land to look at and take in -- and that is what this film is all about. Look at war. Look at its problems. Look at its "solutions". Look at us. Look ...

It's a simple fact that plenty of soldiers are common people who come from nothing and were going nowhere. They didn't necessarily join the military out of a sense of patriotism. They just needed a purpose for living.

A lot of common guys are also trashy. None of these facts detract from the value of their service. Sometimes we see soldiers in an overly idealistic way, as if they are our patriotic, Christian heroes. Some are, but many aren't. That's just life.

Having said that, it almost goes without saying, that watching common trashy people live their depressing lives, is boring.

Certain things, like scenery, multi-dimensional characters, or some kind of epiphany, might save a picture. This one didn't have it.

As some other reviewers put it, Dry Land was indicative of the storyline and pace as well as the terrain. Performances were adequate, if clichéd.

After a bad ambush in Iraq, a man (Ryan O'Nan) comes home to El Paso to settle back into marriage and a job at a slaughter house, but buried issues keep surfacing. He and an army buddy (Wilmer Valderrama) travel to another town to visit a wounded comrade at a VA hospital. America Ferrera plays his wife, Jason Ritter a friend and Melissa Leo his mother

"The Dry Land" (2010) is a drama about post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which brings to mind "Coming Home" (1978), "Born on the Fourth of July" (1989), "In Country" (1989) and "The Lucky Ones" (2007).

This one plays down clichéd Hollywood-isms, keeping the story simple and totally realistic. It's a low-key, slice-of-life film depicting what it's really like for a common military guy to come home from a bad war experience in a distant land and most resembles "In Country," albeit on a lower budget.

It's simple and nothing to get overly excited about, but that's the way it was intended because that's the way it is for military guys like this. There are only a couple of lighter moments.

If you want a highly entertaining example of a similar story, check out "The Lucky Ones."

The film runs 1 hour, 32 minutes, and was shot in El Paso, Texas, and Albuquerque, New Mexico.

GRADE: B-