It isn't that HBO can sometimes turn out a television movie that's at once inexpensive and admirable. After all, anybody can hit a home run once in a while. It's that HBO has managed to do it so consistently, and by tackling subjects that are by no means guaranteed share-collectors. I mean controversial stuff -- Roy Cohn? A disputed presidential election? The means by which a body of an enlisted man is returned from the Middle East? They aren't easy subjects.
This one has Kevin Bacon as Lt. Col. Michael Strobl escorting the body of Pfc. Chance Phelps, KIA, home to Dubois, Wyoming, home to his family.
The story of course is moving. How could it not be? All along, during the flights and drives, Bacon remains with the casket, now wrapped up for its journey in cardboard and bound by those springy steel bands like a particularly long refrigerator. And he and his responsibility are treated with solemn respect every step of the way. Toward the end, high-speed traffic begins to pile up behind the slow-moving hearse. When they realize what they are following, the drivers turn on their headlights and the traffic jam becomes a funeral procession.
It's all pretty tastefully done. At no point does anyone sob -- not during the trip and not during the funeral. Not even during the obligatory praise at the funeral service for Chance Phelps, the young man, who was probably not a paragon of Christian virtue but more likely, like most Marines, tough-minded, self-disciplined, and at times a little reckless.
Informative, too. I had no idea that the bodies and their personal effects were so precisely buffed up and carefully prepared. I thought (without really ever thinking about it) that someone went through the KIA's effects, threw out the pornography, and sent the rest along home. Here, we learn that the dirt and blood are cleaned from everything, from wrist watches to St. Christopher medals, before they're turned over to the escort. And I wouldn't have believed that a Pfc. would have a senior officer to escort him home.
There are no politics in the film, and there shouldn't be.
Nicely done.
This one has Kevin Bacon as Lt. Col. Michael Strobl escorting the body of Pfc. Chance Phelps, KIA, home to Dubois, Wyoming, home to his family.
The story of course is moving. How could it not be? All along, during the flights and drives, Bacon remains with the casket, now wrapped up for its journey in cardboard and bound by those springy steel bands like a particularly long refrigerator. And he and his responsibility are treated with solemn respect every step of the way. Toward the end, high-speed traffic begins to pile up behind the slow-moving hearse. When they realize what they are following, the drivers turn on their headlights and the traffic jam becomes a funeral procession.
It's all pretty tastefully done. At no point does anyone sob -- not during the trip and not during the funeral. Not even during the obligatory praise at the funeral service for Chance Phelps, the young man, who was probably not a paragon of Christian virtue but more likely, like most Marines, tough-minded, self-disciplined, and at times a little reckless.
Informative, too. I had no idea that the bodies and their personal effects were so precisely buffed up and carefully prepared. I thought (without really ever thinking about it) that someone went through the KIA's effects, threw out the pornography, and sent the rest along home. Here, we learn that the dirt and blood are cleaned from everything, from wrist watches to St. Christopher medals, before they're turned over to the escort. And I wouldn't have believed that a Pfc. would have a senior officer to escort him home.
There are no politics in the film, and there shouldn't be.
Nicely done.