Fort McCoy

Kate Connor wrote and directed this affectionate and loving memoir of her family and the time they spent in Wisconsin at a place called Fort McCoy. Actually Camp McCoy, but I'll not quibble.

Clan patriarch Eric Stoltz comes to the camp to be a barber for the GIs, he's got a heart murmur and is a 4-F. The same thing knocked with malaria knocked Errol Flynn out of war service. It grates on him constantly, both in looking at the kids going overseas and those coming back dead and alive. Even the Germans and Japanese who were captured get a bit of envy for their service.

But wives and daughters also serve and the daughters form their own attachments to the soldiers, individually and collectively. Which brings me to the most poignant part of Fort McCoy. Young Gara Lonning entering puberty herself notices for the first time someone of the opposite sex. He happens to be Josh Zabel playing Heinrich who is a POW all of about 13 or so.

There's a famous newsreel film of Hitler giving a pep talk to some Hitler youth now impressed into service for the Fatherland. By 1944 I'm sure many were dead and many prisoners of war. The little innocent attraction of Zabel and Lonning will wet the eyes and the ultimate tragedy reduce you to tears.

Fort McCoy is a tale poignantly told and really should be seen to learn about how loss of innocence is too big a price for war.

The story is a little simple and sentimental, but I didn't have any expectations. I think the cast does a good job with the material that doesn't have enough time to fully flesh out the characters. Eric Stoltz is good too; I never really understood why he didn't get bigger roles. Maybe, his roles will get a second wind when he doesn't look 13. It's a little bit Leave It To Beaver, so is probably popular with the Christian crowd.

I found the movie randomly on Netflix but I clicked on it because I was a kid on Ft. McCoy as well. There were only about 4 kids on the post in 1978, and I do remember a 1950's purity of living there. We lived so far apart we never saw each other except when a jeep picked us up to take us into the schools in Sparta. The POW fences and towers remained, but it was a ghost town except in the summer when reservists showed up to bomb the ranges into oblivion. Years later, after we left, they would turn the barracks, not the compounds into a camp for Cuban "refugees." The movie captured a certain feel to the place that I liked...beautiful woods, Squaw lake, and some old fashioned values that remained on army posts into the 80's at least. It was a fun place to be a kid but the movie only has time to give you a glimpse of that.

A first-rate, flawless film worth going out of your way to see. It's all there--an engaging story with believable characters and fine acting, a piece of history worth knowing about, a perfectly-detailed recreation of place and time--and it's a true story! Granddaughter Kate Connor has lovingly and unflinchingly brought her family back to life, and you and your family will thank her for it. This film deserves wide, mainscreen distribution and will make some smart person a lot of money. Americana, a happy ending, and a G rating! And this from a guy who would usually avoid a film with those parameters! (Seen at 2011 Newport Beach Filmfest)(reviewer has no personal or financial connection to the filmmakers)

For those of us who grew up in this era, this movie was a very lovely trip down memory lane. As others have commented, the acting in this movie was not the best, but the attempt to recreate the era was quite realistic and exceptionally well done. The living conditions, the technology, the social mores and the nature of life at the time were very accurate well depicted.

I personally served at Ft McCoy and can vouch for the authenticity of the site and the facilities depicted in the film. This is a film that preserves an important historic story about a special place, like many other such places in WWII, and a unique group of people serving their county in whatever way they could and trying at the same time to preserve some sense of normalcy. I highly recommend it.

Overall I'm a bit disappointed. I thought this would be an interesting period piece, and I'm a fan of (looking at) Lyndsy Fonseca, who I think is the most beautiful actress out there.

While watching this film I kept having to remind myself that it was filmed 5 years ago. Perhaps during this time, Lyndsy Fonseca has gotten a ton of experience from filming Nikita, Kick Ass, etc. and took lots of acting classes. Honestly I thought her acting was stiff and basically poor in this. The beginning scenes were especially tough to watch.

Getting past that, Eric Stoltz carried the film and delivered a believable performance. I think the supporting cast let him down. Also I wish they had developed some of the story lines of these characters a little bit better. I will say I think the kids in the film did a good job.

I was looking forward to seeing the depiction of a US POW camp. After seeing the film, I question their depiction of the prison camp. The real Fort McCoy was/is huge. There were 4000+ POW's there. From this film, you'd think it was a small place where everyone knew each other. The budget probably made it necessary to slim things down quite a bit.