There have been a variety of movies about soldiers coming home from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in the last few years. In the Valley of Elah was one in 2007 starring Tommy Lee Jones and Charlize Theron. Stop-Loss came out last year starring Ryan Phillippe and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. And then there was The Lucky Ones in September 2008.
The Lucky Ones stars Rachel McAdams, Tim Robbins, and Michael Peña as three soldiers on leave who take an unexpected road trip across the United States. And this is definitely not your usual war movie, soldier homecoming movie, or road trip movie. It almost effortlessly blends a trio of intriguing characters coming "home" to find that things aren't how they hoped.
As TK Poole, Peña plays a cocky, self-assured sergeant coming back to the U.S. to visit his fiancée. McAdams plays Private Colee Dunn, delivering the guitar of a friend who didn't make it back to his family. And Robbins plays Sergeant Fred Cheever, a man returning home to his family and retiring from the military.
Each of these characters has depth, and a unique perspective on the world. I found Colee to be the glue holding them together. TK and Cheever have their own insecurities and Colee's innocent demeanor kept the serious scenes from becoming too overwrought, while keeping the trip going.
There were a couple of fun things that kept happening. One was whenever the group would thank someone, you'd hear them reply "No, thank you!" And the other was Colee's fascination with wanting to play tourist as they headed across the country. Eventually they did stop for a picnic in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, but only to stop her from crying.
Each character brought their own biases to the world, but even more than that the world's biases were ever present each time they interacted with a group of people: a group of clueless college students, politically minded yet clueless people in the midwest, or even police officers. It was almost as though you could see their biases line up for or against the soldiers.
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