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Movie Review: ‘Thank You for Your Service’ isn’t perfect, but it’s a story that needs to be told

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Walking into a critic’s screening creates an unusual juxtaposition of feelings in the pit of your stomach. On the one hand, you’re acutely aware that you’re getting to see a movie months before its release, and as the theater staff usher you off to a screen with a form of pseudo secrecy, it’s easy to feel like you’re kind of a big deal.

But then you reach your seat, and the pomp and circumstance of the situation gives way to the sobering reality that you’re still just you, sitting alone in the dark as strangers mill about around you.

In that way, being a movie critic isn’t that unlike serving in the military.  For many of us, we get so enthralled in the build up, in the training, in a lifestyle that gives you this palpable sense of being, or at least BECOMING, kind of a big deal… but then, once the “thank you’s” for your service subside, and your dress uniform is hung back up in the closet… it’s just you again, alone in the dark.

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  • Avatar
    HowFar?

    Truth.

  • Avatar
    Alan t

    You should have mooned her

  • Avatar
    Robert L

    Alex, thanks for the review, and thanks for bravely sharing your reaction. ” I sat, safe and sound behind the tinted windows of my little car, and got my shit together. “, that is what we do, right? We build that room we keep our shit in and make it so strong that none of it can break out. When a new movie comes out I approach it with such a mixed range of emotion and expectation. I want to “see” that bond of brothers in battle that does not exist elsewhere, and I dread the sense of loss that is inevitable as it prys my “doors” open. I see the other combat vets in the audience with tears in their eyes or moving uneasily in their chairs, trying to “get our shit together” and lock those doors again, because that person sitting next us needs us to be their rock. Our friends need to know we are there for them, and we will be. So I take a moment, “get my shit together” and go forward, 45 years of practice – and with each movie I have to ask myself if the benefits of seeing the movie are worth the inevitable cracks in that door. Being a PJ in Nam may be the best thing I have ever done, but I think many of us feel like “getting our shit together” is the hardest thing we have ever done. Why did I post this? Because a young friend of mine with 2 tours in Iraq told me I didn’t understand, because I was a PJ, because people who were special ops, or operators, or some other “elite” form of warrior didn’t have the same struggles. We do. We always will. And our community needs to know it is ok to “get our shit together” too.

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    Mason F

    Thank you well said. As a civvy I always worry about this with my military friends. To date, none of my family or friends that have served have had any issues, except maybe an innate distrust of folks in the middle east. Personally, I would never assume that my circle of military family and friends “have an issue” or approach them that way. I would rather (if there was) that they bring it up to me in confidence. Maybe I have it wrong.

  • Avatar
    Ranger Baggins

    I agree, I am super anxious to read the interview.