Taking Chance - HellcatBetty's Review

I write this having just finished watching the movie Taking Chance, because I know myself and if I don’t write it now, the subject matter will be too intense for me to bring myself to revisit it later. I’m exhausted. I knew this movie was one that I should maybe wait until hubby is home to watch, but in many ways I’m glad I watched it now. I love my husband dearly, but he has an amazing knack for ruining movies with off-color jokes… especially if I’m crying. I know he does it to ease the tension, but I’m a wallower… if I’m going to feel something I want to really feel it.

I must say that this is one of the more respectful and poignant war/military movies I’ve ever seen. It felt more like a documentary with actors and a soundtrack… and I mean that in the best of ways. I felt like I was going on the journey with Kevin Bacon’s character, which is a testament to the depth of KB’s acting skills. He was a perfect fit for this part. I wrote down at one point during the movie, “The quietness of KB’s character lent to the respect and reverence.” But it wasn’t just his portrayal, but every single person in the film did an outstanding job. Somewhere there’s a casting director that deserves an award for this one.

As a military wife whose husband is currently deployed, this movie touched me in a very real way. You cannot help but put yourself in the place of this family and wonder what it would be like if that were you. It’s morbid, but I guarantee that all wives who have been around the military for a significant amount of time have replayed some of those scenarios in their head more than once. We can’t help it. But this movie captured that raw emotion so beautifully that you feel honored to have been a part of it at the end. There were a couple times when I had to pause the movie and collect myself before I could move on.

It’s funny though, I think that while it was difficult to watch with my husband still deployed to the Middle East, it was better to have watched it without him here than it would have been with him sitting next to me. My husband has served on the Military Funeral Honors Team in our state for several years, and has buried probably over a thousand veterans. Over that time, he’s become somewhat callous. And I can’t say I blame him. I think in that position, as in many situations in the military, you have to make jokes about it so it doesn’t seem so real and you don’t have to think as much. Had hubby been here watching it, he would’ve joked about the way the casket was held, or critiqued the way they folded the flag (his favorite thing to pick apart), and it would have driven me crazy. As it was, I could almost here him in my head and I chuckled at wildly inappropriate times… luckily I was alone in my house.

I could really go on and on about this movie, but I don’t want to bore you to tears. You can save them to go in the tissues you’ll need to have handy when you watch this film. I still have a crumpled wad of torn up, soggy tissue next to me now. Trust me, you’ll need it.

Taking Chance - The Albrecht Squad

When I first saw the trailer for Taking Chance, I knew immediately that this was a movie I HAD to watch. I even went as far as to change my Dish Network package to include HBO just so I could watch this movie. As the date approached that it would be on TV, I debated about whether I wanted to watch it right away or leave it on my DVR until after my husband came back from Iraq. I decided that I would watch it right away. I had read the articles about Chance Phelps, so I thought I could handle the movie, I felt prepared.

I watched it during the day while my kids were at school. I sat on the couch with a large glass of water and a box of tissues, prepared to sob throughout the whole movie. I mean I cried through the trailer, I felt I needed to be ready for the entire movie. As I already mentioned, my husband was in Iraq during this time. On his previous tour we had lost some good friends. Both of us were very close to the situation. I knew that watching this movie would open up a floodgate of emotions; I hoped it would provide some healing for me or at least allow me to shed some of the tears I had not allowed to flow freely in over 3 years.

Immediately in the opening I was brought to tears, watching the notification. I have close friends who have lost their Soldiers in Iraq and watching that moment was very hard. I could go on and on about what this movie did for me in my healing process. I could talk about how hard it was to watch the ramp ceremony and think about my husband doing the same thing over 7000 miles away because he has, more times then I know he would care to admit. I won’t break down piece by piece how this movie has caused me to relive some of the hardest moments in our Military career or in our lives ever.

What I liked about this movie, what I feel made it “real” and captured an aspect of our lifestyle that no one likes to talk about, one that is pretty taboo in our community, is that someone cared enough about the details. This movie was about details and they weren’t willing to compromise. It was about the Honor and sense of Duty so many of our men and women feel.

I don’t feel that this movie was all talk, it was about action. It showed the sacrifices our Military is making in life and in duty. It is about honoring those who have paid the price and the honor they deserve. The journey…every detail of the journey home is important. Our fallen might be a 10 second byline flashed across a television screen but for the many who this directly affects it’s so much more. I feel this movie really displayed that. I think that often America is sometimes removed from what is going on and the sacrifices being made by our Military. This movie shows those who take the time to watch it what it is all about. From the wife saying goodbye and wondering what it’s about, to the real emotions of everyone who came in contact with the deceased, those in uniform and those not.

To me this movie captured emotions that are hard to describe, but it got them right. This movie was very personal to me. I do read the casualty announcements on the Department of Defense website every single day. It’s the least I can do to honor those who have paid the price. And this movie was an amazing inside look on what happens to those whose names end up there. I did cry through the whole movie, LCPL Phelps’ legacy was worth every tear shed.

TAKING CHANCE--USMCWIFE8999'S TAKE

Taking Chance is an HBO Movie based upon the experiences of Lt. Col. Michael Strobl (Kevin Bacon) escorting the body of a Marine, PFC Chance Phelps. Lt. Col Strobl wrote an “after action” report on his entire journey and the film takes this report, and puts it on the screen so beautifully you feel as if you are on the journey with the Lt. Col and his charge PFC Phelps (Lcpl Phelps as he was promoted posthumously.)
I was hesitant to watch this movie, being the daughter of a fallen Marine and the wife of a Marine. I really didn’t know what to expect, I am always very hesitant to watch these types of movies obviously (that is why this blog was created) but decided to go ahead since Kevin Bacon playing a Marine is always reason enough for me to watch (Few Good Men, Frost Nixon..ya I could go on).
This movie is a straight forward account of a fallen Marine and the journey he takes from the war zone in which he fell (Iraq) until he is delivered into the hands of his family. The meat of the movie is all the people this Marine touches along the way. From the frustrated Lt. Col who is looking for his purpose while sitting at a desk in D.C. to the passengers on the plane and every other soul that only glimpses at the Marines flag draped coffin.
What I took away from the movie wasn’t so much as how this movie touched people, being a military wife I am not immune to this scene, I know how much it means and the honor that goes with it. I was comforted in actually “seeing” the process. Knowing that my friends, my father or any fallen service member would receive this honor made me proud.
What I hope the civilian population takes from this movie is seeing the men and women under the flag, how desperately they are loved. How they are not a statistic or a crawl on the evening news. They are sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, husbands, wives, fathers and mothers. I hope it makes them want to start to search the internet to read about some of our fallen, to say their names, to talk about them. Not just Chance but all of the others who made this same journey.
I couldn’t watch the movie again, I am sorry my review doesn’t include a lot of little details about it; it is just too much to watch more than once. I wouldn’t recommend watching this movie alone, and not when your loved one is in theater. But do watch it, I couldn’t think of another movie I would recommend as enthusiastically as this one.
If you would like to know more about Lcpl. Chance Phelps you can find it here. http://www.chancephelps.org/lance-corporal-chance-phelps/

5 Posts In & We're Already Famous!

Our little fledgling blog was featured on SpouseBuzz.com today! So nice to know that people are interested. If you'd like to check out the article, click here. And thanks for reading!

The Hurt Locker - HellcatBetty's Take

I hadn't gotten around to writing my thoughts on The Hurt Locker movie yet, but watching the Oscars tonight spurned me into action. For those who don't know, The Hurt Locker is a movie that focuses on Army EOD (Explosive Ordinance Disposal) soldiers disarming bombs in Baghdad, Iraq in 2004. And it just won the Academy Award for Best Picture.

I watched the movie about a month and a half ago, and liked it. It's very emotional and you can feel the tension of the situations. Pictures I'd seen from my husband looked like the Iraq I was seeing on the screen, and I saw a bit of some of hubby's friends in the faces of the characters. On a personal level, I identified with a scene in which the main character (played by Jeremy Renner) goes home and he's standing in the cereal aisle at a grocery store staring at rows of boxes looking as if he wondered why any of it mattered. Hubs and I have had to leave grocery stores a couple times (mainly right after he returned from Afghanistan the last time) because he suddenly felt overwhelmed.

There were parts of it that I balked at because I knew they weren't realistic, but hey - that's Hollywood right? I hadn't given it a second thought until a few days ago when I got the chance to talk to hubby on the phone for about an hour (YAY!) and we discussed the movie. He had nothing good to say about it. He was irritated and offended and proceeded to tell me a laundry list of inaccuracies present in the film.

For starters, soldiers are wearing ACUs (the current uniform) throughout the movie, whereas in reality those uniforms were not yet standard issue in 2004. Seems like a simple thing that the film's producers could have sorted out pretty easily by consulting military personnel from the time period, hubby says. There was also a massive disregard for rank structure in the film, one scene in particular in which a soldier punched his superior in the face and no consequences were leveled. Anyone with remote knowledge of the military would understand - that wouldn't happen. One of hubby's biggest gripes was the way ground forces (i.e. Infantry) were depicted in the film. The scene in particular that actually offended him was one where the EOD arrived on scene and ground forces had abandoned their vehicle and were hiding out in the courtyard of a nearby home waiting for the EOD to get there and saunter up to the bombs and start cutting wires. As an Infantryman, hubby assured me that would never happen.

His list went on and on, and I began to consider that whether or not the film appeals to the viewer's emotions in a way that would inspire sympathy and gain a bit of understanding of what our men and women go through overseas, it may not be the way in which our soldiers wish to be represented. The inaccuracies were great enough that he couldn't see past them to find the merit in the film. For that, I certainly cannot blame him. The military is all about precision.

His comments and our discussion made me re-think my views on the movie. I watched the Oscars this evening with mixed feelings. I have to say that by the time it was announced that the film had won Best Picture, I was sort of disappointed. I re-watched the movie after the Awards ceremony ended and after having that conversation with the hubby, all I could see were instances that would never actually happen. A soldier running of the FOB (Forward Operating Base) to chase down the family of a little boy he'd thought had been killed, and then re-entering the base without being shot by friendly fire while running through the shadows. It just wouldn't happen... not by any stretch of the imagination.

So now, having talked to hubby and re-watched the movie myself, I am left with some conflicting feelings. I do believe that this film has its merits. It gets at the raw emotion and confusions and chaos that our men and women experience in battle. It gives viewers a mental image of what many of our soldiers have seen and heard and asks them to think about the situations from a perspective outside their own (often limited) knowledge of war. Above all, I think it forces the viewer to contemplate what it might be like to return from such intense situations, to a former life and choices that seem mundane and unimportant. It gives the viewer some insight into that man they see standing in the grocery store staring the rows of cereal.

That said, I do think that in some ways this movie does a disservice to our veterans in that it doesn't give an accurate portrayal of what they do or how they do it. The rank structure is ignored, the tactics they use are often completely off base, and the roles of various MOS's are either diminished or exaggerated. I can understand their concern, and their desire for a movie that can achieve the goals that The Hurt Locker does, but without misrepresenting their jobs and their lives in such significant ways.

TheAlbrechtSquad - Hurt Locker Review

I must start off mentioning that this review is a consolidation of thoughts from me and my husband who is a Soldier who has served over 20 years (dang that makes us sound old).

While many would probably tell me to ignore the little details, I happen to be a details person because I often find that those who don’t bother with the “little” things often miss the bigger, most important things. I had a notebook with me as I watched to capture some of the thoughts that crossed my mind.

Let me start off by saying that my husband acknowledged that they did a good job putting you on the streets of Iraq. The atmosphere was almost spot on. The way the children acted both loving and with hatred and the leering of the adults on the sides of the street. Very realistic. I also want to say I quite enjoyed the moments when you could feel the Soldiers and their sense of camaraderie and the need to take care of one another. That’s about where the realistic points of this movie ended for me.

Right from the beginning I noticed that they were all wearing ACUs. Since the story was supposed to have taken place in 2004, this is not realistic as ACUs were not being issued to all troops at that time. In fact, few had them, so the fact that everyone in the movie was wearing ACUs shows me that someone did not do a lot of research there. Oh and the sleeves don’t get rolled up on the ACUs the way the Soldiers had them. They don’t get folded/rolled up at all.

Something else that caught my eye almost immediately was the fact that SGT Sanborn was wearing a Combat Infantry Badge (CIB). I thought that a little odd as an EOD tech but gave the benefit of the doubt that maybe he had reclassed (how is that for imagination!). Well later in the movie while he was chatting with SFC James, he mentioned that before becoming an EOD tech he had served for 7 years in the Military Intelligence field. He was not authorized a CIB. A detail like that is very important to me.

I thought it was ridiculous that 3 Soldiers were running around the streets of Baghdad alone. That is not logical or realistic. Throw in when SFC James goes to try and find out about the young Iraqi boy who was killed and he is running through the streets alone. I had a good chuckle over that.

I greatly dislike that they had the drinking scene. I’ll be real, it has happened over there but to that extreme, not likely. Along with that, the SGT punching his superior, stupid. The ego on that SFC, in a job like EOD, confidence is a must but there isn’t much room for cockiness, it’s a good way to get yourself killed.

I have to admit I had high expectations for this movie, after hearing from so many people that it was the best war movie to date and so real. I have heard that from both military personal and civilians alike. Unfortunately I was disappointed and my husband was disappointed. It’s a good action flick, for those who care not about the little details in regards to the military aspect, it’s worth your money. For those hoping that someone would finally get “it” right, wait until you get a code for a free rental at one of those Redbox machines.

The Albrecht Squad

http://thealbrechtsquad.blogspot.com/

"As for me and my family, we will serve the Lord and our Country"

USMCWIFE8999 TAKE ON HURT LOCKER

I went to the theater to watch Hurt Locker the first time on base with a theater full of Marines. It is always interesting to watch these types of movies with Marines. As soon as the movie rolled the entire theater went silent (not typical in a theater full of Marines). To rip-off a line from Jerry McGuire, this movie had me from the first scene. I think it would be a fair assessment to say this movie takes you in and puts you on the streets in Iraq in 2004 in the early days of Operation Iraqi Freedom. I felt that there was so much to take in and see, like I was standing on the streets watching the movie unfold. The director successfully created what I imagine it must be like there, and asking my husband he said that in fact it was very much like Iraq.
Hurt Locker doesn’t pull any punches about war, or at least the life of an Explosive Ordinance Disposal Technician (EOD). It’s gritty and dirty and it captures the courage of these men. Not really sure about all the technical aspects being realistic..ie..weapons, vehicles and stuff like that. My only concern is what the civilian population will see when viewing the movie. Our military have a different eye for these types of things that I do not as a spouse. What I also think it captured was the type of person that does this job, the protagonist of the film Ssg. James, played brilliantly by Jeremy Renner seemed to be right on target with the no holds barred EOD type I have met. EOD guys (again, that I have met) are a bit off center and a little primadonish. I like that the filmmaker balanced out the James character with Sgt. Sanborn as the voice of reason and Eldridge the innocent “follower” both played respectfully by Anthony Mackie and Brian Geraghty. I think it was important that these types of soldiers were also in the mix to show that there is no “typical” soldier and that usually the commonality is the brotherhood that the three of these characters eventually developed.
I really do not want to get into the nitty gritty of the film, if I was to do that this could go on for days. Since my goal is to point out what I believe to be right on target with what I know of the military and what seems off or not in line of what I know. I believe for the most part Hurt Locker was a fair portrayal of the men of EOD and the things they deal with. Maybe not in whole, some things were incredibly doubtful but it was a movie. In fact I had to decide if this was a movie I wanted to introduce to my husband when he first returned from Afghanistan since the first 2 months there they lost 3 of their EOD. I think this movie is realistic enough that you as a spouse may want to take a moment before screening it for your loved one if they haven’t yet seen it.
What I personally identified with was the “loyalty” of the long suffering wife played by Evangeline Lily. I think most of us understand her pain and longing for the “normalcy” that often eludes us for longer than we would like. Honestly there were only two things in the movie I want to call out as unfair. I think the shooting of the Iraqi man by soldiers was not necessary. Do I think this has never happened? Well it might have, do I think it has happened enough to be in this film, no I do not. So I think that could have been omitted, it paints soldiers in a light I think is unfair. Also the drinking part and getting wasted on base, from my knowledge alcohol is forbidden, especially in those early days, my Army sisters may have to chime in on this since all my knowledge is Marine based. Probably not a big deal but still seemed out of sync.
I would enthusiastically recommend the Hurt Locker, keeping in mind it is a movie and facts aren't always facts when drama is needed for a movie.