Amazon.com video review:
Directors Sidney Lumet, Alan J. Pakula, Sydney Pollack, and Norman
Jewison astutely documented the political pulse of
the '60s and '70s with such films as Prince of the City, The
Parallax View,
Three Days of the Condor, and In the Heat of the Night. Lumet
and Jewison have
carried their cinematic social consciousness into their past two decades of
filmmaking as well. In Country (1989) is Jewison's mournful look at
one
American family's struggle to survive the aftermath of Vietnam. The film is
based on Bobbie Ann Mason's book
and it was Bruce Willis's first effort to
break out of his Moonlighting and Die Hard mold by tackling
the dramatically
dark role of Emmett, a Vietnam veteran whose flashbacks of battle horror
have pushed him into isolation from the world. His niece, Samantha (Emily
Lloyd),
lost her dad in the war, and these two unlikely people form a bond based on
a
past Emmett can't escape and a future that looms bright and beautiful for
Samantha. What Jewison does best is evoke the sense of hope that was once
held by the
forgotten survivors of that terrible war. In
Country ambitiously struggles to pull all of its threads together, and
while this is a wonderful character study, it has a messy, meandering
structure that never quite gels or answers the
questions it poses. Yet there's no denying that the climactic closing
scenes
have a poignancy and power that will bring tears to anyone watching.
--Paula Nechak
