Articles
The War at Home Review - LA Times
November 22 1996
How wonderful it would be to be able to dismiss Emilio Estevez's "The War at Home" as being a little late in the game, as it deals with the agony of a returning Vietnam vet. That it is set in 1972, however, simply drives home its question of whether America really has taken responsibility for sending its sons and daughters off to a war that President Eisenhower himself warned against.
According to the National Veterans Foundation, some 500,000 Vietnam veterans still suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, and it estimates that 34% of America's homeless are Vietnam veterans. "The War at Home" leaves you wondering how many more have gone untreated and to what degree such suffering has been heightened by the widespread ambivalence toward our most unpopular war and those who fought it.
This is strong stuff, but "The War at Home" goes beyond its bristling broadside against the cruel plight of so many Vietnam veterans to present a portrait of the Middle American family at once as critical and compassionate as that of a Sinclair Lewis novel. If self-absorption is the abiding sin of Estevez's Colliers, just think how this tendency has worsened among us in the past quarter century.
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