Plot Details: This opinion reveals minor details about the movie's plot.

After the Vietnam War life was not a bowl of cherries, at least not for poor southern people and veterans living with nightmares, anguish and discrimination. Kevin Costners veteran character, Stephen Simmons, in the Jon Avnet-directed movie, The War, grunts to his wife, God bless America. Theyll give you a hand-out before they give you a job! He lost three jobs because of his nightmares, so he checked into a mental hospital for help with them, but upon returning to his family as the movie begins, he loses a custodial job at the kids school because the school discovered he had been a mental case and had a law about hiring such people.

1994s The War is not simply about a family down on their luck because of the Vietnam War. We also see racial discrimination in the kids summer school class by the snooty teacher who sends the colored kids to sit in the back, wants them to read the book Why Life Is Like A Bowl Of Cherries and write their memoirs based on it, and harasses a quiet black girl, demanding an answer for her insolence. One of my favorite scenes is when the girl sarcastically answers the teacher.

Alright, I'll tell you. I was sayin' "Elvadine, what's YOU gots to write about? Been in the sixth grade your whole good-for-nuthin' life. Ain't GOT no daddy. Never goes anywhere but where your feets take you...And I'm gonna write, how maybe the new man my momma been seein' might stop drinkin', and treat me nice, and maybe he's gonna adopt me, and take us off the welfare...

Life sure is a bowl full of cherries.

But to tell you the truth, Miss Strapford, I think you, and that book, and this whole class, be a bowl full of sh!t!

The 126 minute, PG-13 rated movie has some good laughs like that one. The focus is on Simmons preteen son, Stu, who craves both his fathers love and approval. Elijah Wood takes top billing as the frustrated son pitted against bullies and trying not to fight them as his father desires. He and his sister with their friends build a tree fort in a majestic southern live oak (700-800 years old) as symbol of their need for a stable home, but when the bullies learn that Stus sister pillaged from their fathers junkyard to build and furnish it, they create more trouble. All the bad blood between them is further exacerbated by heartache for Stu and his sister and escalates into a horrifying war over the fort.

Written by Kathy McWorter, The War has increasingly heavy subject matter, maybe too heavy, including a couple of war flashbacks (as Stephen explains the source of his nightmares to Stu,) the presence of discrimination and whether God or angels are watching or listening. Stephen says and does many thought-provoking things, too, to encourage peace and loving action, delivered without preachiness. They sound like a real family and in the nail-biting climax the kids realize that they can never give up trying to love and how wise their father has been. Songs by the Supremes, Aretha, The Band, John Fogerty and Cat Stevens (his Peace Train was original music!) and others were perfectly placed in the movie, capturing the girls playfulness or the 70s turbulence.

I applaud this movie for sensitively dealing with difficult subjects in an entertaining and quote-worthy way. It is not simply anti-war, but more pro-love and pro-hope for a better future. Wood and Costner were very strong characters, but I enjoyed Mare Winningham and the other realistic performances. As the sister said:

War is like a big machine that no one really knows how to run and when it gets out of control it ends up destroying the things you thought you were fighting for, and a lot of other things you kinda forgot you had


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Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: DVD