The War (1994)

Directed by Jon Avnet. Starring Elijah Wood, Lexi Faith Randall, Kevin Costner, LaToya Chisholm, Mare Winningham, Leon Sills, Donald Sellers, Charlette Julius, Brennan Gallagher, Adam Henderson, Will West, Bruce A. Young, Lucas Black, Jennifer Tyler, Christopher Fennell, Raynor Scheine, Christine Baranski. [PG-13]

It’s summer break for siblings Wood and Randall in a small Southern town in the 1970s, and as they spend their days escaping from the dreary poverty of their reality by building a tree house and avoiding a pack of hillbilly bullies, their traumatized Vietnam veteran father (Costner) tries to pass along values of empathy to his son, ones which instruct no good comes from fighting. Ambitious coming-of-age story seeks to draw parallels between the conflicts in Vietnam and America’s own “backyard”, a metaphor-heavy parable steeped in its swirl of youthful nostalgia, provincial hardship, and social/racial enmity. Quite effective during several vignettes in the first half, but other scenes press their luck in making loud and obvious points (a classroom scene with Baranski’s bigoted teacher, for example, contains a crowd-pleasing rejoinder, to be sure, but did it have to be so heavy-handed?). Ultimately, the movie falls apart in its final third with at least two climaxes too many, including over-dramatically staged scenes of makeshift warfare and dubious peril that threaten to spill over into Hollywood fantasy. The fine performances from nearly the entire cast, especially young Wood, make it all the more of a shame the screenplay is so overwritten, the late scenarios so contrived. Lucas Black’s film debut.

49/100