Stevecorp Don't listen to the negative reviews

Cooktopi The acting in this movie is really good.

Rosie Searle It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Cheryl A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

zetes A more or less unreleased little indie that, for the most part, is as generic as its forgettable title. However, it has one big thing going for it and that is the lead performance, from Freaks and Geeks star Linda Cardellini. While many of her co-stars on that one-season-wonder went on to become big stars, Cardellini has done so little. She was Velma in the Scooby Doo movies, for God's sake. She really knocks it out of the part here as a returning Iraq War veteran who can't re-adjust to normal life. Michael Shannon and John Slattery (of Mad Men fame) co-star, but neither has much to do. Cardellini owns every frame of the movie. The script is nothing special, but she makes it worthwhile. Certainly worth a look, especially if you loved Cardellini on Freaks and Geeks and want to see her shine.

Larry Silverstein The film, which I found could be disturbing and powerful, stars Linda Cardellini and Michael Shannon.Cardellini is superb as a returning Army veteran where she worked in the supply chain but apparently in a war zone. Although it's never specified you would guess it's Afghanistan or Iraq.She's greeted at the airport by her husband(Shannon) and her two daughters. They return to their small town home in Ohio.It's quickly apparent that Cardellini is not the same woman that she was when she left for her one year tour of duty. Seemingly quite depressed she begins to display increasingly erratic and volatile behavior.One day, on a spur of the moment decision, she quits her long time warehouse job, which had been held for her while she served overseas. She is arrested for a DUI and her license is suspended. One day she gets her days confused and forgets to pick up her daughter, who is found by the police trying to walk home.All of this leads to severe marital discord, and her husband files and receives an emergency custody of their two daughters but she will be allowed to have unsupervised custody on the weekends.Cardellini starts to attend court mandated AA meetings but really doesn't open up there about her problems. As she files for a court hearing on custody she gets a redeployment notice from the Army.She then resorts to more desperate measures which I'll leave to the viewer to see.This is Cardellini's film and she doesn't disappoint with a riveting and nuanced performance. It can be difficult to watch at times and disturbing but I felt it was worth it.The film also shines a light on a major problem in this country. You read all the time how returning veterans suffer severe marital stress, turn to addictions, or even commit suicide. Yet it seems not enough turn to any available programs from the V.A. or other organizations. There must be a better way of immediately reaching out to returning vets and helping them cope with the realities of their lives.

Twins65 I know this is a bit of stretch, but here it goes: Remember "Disco & Dragons", the last episode from Freaks and Geeks? Well, what if Linda Cardellini (as Lindsay Weir), who duped her parents into thinking she was going to a summer college academic summit, never did get to Ann Arbor again and enroll at The Univ. of Michigan. She followed that Grateful Dead tour for about a year, and finally got off the VW micro-bus somewhere in Ohio. She gets a dead-end factory job, joins the reserves, meets and marries a local plumber guy, has a couple of kids, and then has to go abroad for an extended tour of tedious guard duty. Coming back home on the other side of age thirty, she just can't seem to reconnect with her old life (husband, kids, job, friends) at all. A quick downward spiral finds her in rehab, and then she gets the news she's got to go back overseas on active duty once more. Kind of a bit much for a young, fragile mom with two kids she loves no longer in her custody. And there's your movie.Yeah, there was a quick subplot, as she tried to get pregnant to avoid going overseas again. Once she hooked-up with an Oxycodone snorting Roger Sterling from "Mad Men" she met in rehab, and then tried again with her factory buddy Mickey Doyle from "Boardwalk Empire", but neither of these desperate attempts were 'successful'.In the end, we're supposed to get a bit of a tied-up gut as viewers, when she hastily grabs the kids and drives away from it all for several miles, only to reluctantly return and get on her fatigues again.This low-budget indie movie could have worked, as the acting (including Michael Shannon as her hubby) was good. There just wasn't a compelling enough story to grab you in. And unfortunately, (mostly) all post 9/11 war-related movies (and war-at-home movies) have died on the vine, commercially, if not critically, and RETURN certainly falls in the category. Maybe it would have found an audience as a TV movie.

dbroder-239-112243 Careful, subtle, artistic portrait of the inner conflicts and turmoil experienced by a woman soldier on her return home from war. From the beginning of her return to her family we see how there are things seriously troubling her that she herself can't put into words. We watch the external, behavioral effects of these psychological conflicts as she interacts with her husband and children who themselves have also been affected. Which war she returns from is not stated, clearly intentionally to show the viewer that this is not important. There is little external drama in this quiet, sensitive demonstration of the powerful psychological forces stimulated by military service in war, both in the service member and in her family. Liza Johnson gives us a movie that shows us a fictional character and her life yet has in every scene a ring of truth. This is an artistic achievement.