I thought about how I wanted to describe "Lonesome Soldier" as I watched it. I thought over adjectives such as cliche, trite, and repetitive but I had to ask myself why this film was making me so irritable. It wasn't because it was cliche but rather because it was true.
The film bills itself as being "based on a true story" although it isn't clear whose story that is. It doesn't really matter because at least in the veteran community we have all lived this story or been adjacent to it. Veterans struggling with drug addiction and suicidal ideation, or children being raised by grandparents while parents struggle with fentanyl abuse is not the work of science fiction but rather a story that plays out every day across the entire country.
"Lonesome Soldier" is a small independently produced film about Jackson Harlow, a young man from a small town without many opportunities. He joins the National Guard to support his young family. While in the military, he meets people who come from different backgrounds and becomes closer to them than some of the losers he grew up with. Getting deployed to Iraq he experiences war and death, then comes home to find his wife addicted to drugs while he struggles with his own post-traumatic stress issues.
It's a dark story, similar to other indie films made about, and often by, military veterans. "Sgt. Will Gartner" (2019) stars Max Martini in a story about an Iraq war veteran struggling with homelessness. "Once a Hero" (2022) stars former Navy SEAL Brentt Jones as a veteran also struggling with homelessness and addiction.
By my third incredibly dark and depressing indie film about veterans, I had to ask myself: why does this story keep getting told? Some like to blame Hollywood, saying that the movie industry loves making vets into victims but these films are not made by Hollywood, but rather by passionate individuals who are almost certainly never going to make their money back on these endeavors. I don't think these films are in conversation with one another either, when I asked Martini about "Once a Hero" he was unaware that the film existed.
The inevitable conclusion is that these films keep being made because the same sad stories keep playing out across America. Those are stories that make you want to look away. They're not popcorn films you take your girlfriend to.
In the same way that soldiers deployed abroad make motivational videos of airstrikes and firefights overlaid with heavy metal music, the public is shocked and horrified by this graphic content. They are horrified by what they subjected young American men and women to for twenty years, and don't want to have it rubbed in their faces.
"Lonesome Soldier" isn't an easy movie to watch but it also is not hopelessly bleak, although that isn't apparent until the last five minutes or so of the film. While the content of the film is incredibly important let's also be honest here... these films can appear as trauma fests that beat the audience over the head with heart-wrenching moments that, again, I would like to describe as cliche but I know numerous people that all of these things have happened to.
The public may want to look away for their own reasons, but veterans have their own. We've seen this story happen to ourselves and to our friends far too often.
Sadly, "Lonesome Soldier" is a story that will be told many more times over the next several decades as America is only in the early phases of dealing with the social fallout from two failed wars.
"Lonesome Soldier" will screen at 45 AAFES movie theaters on military installations around the country starting Dec. 1 and will then be available online starting in February.