Rarely would I argue for less screen time for female characters, but part of Long Road Home’s significant bloat stems from the lengthy and repetitive scenes we’re shown of the quietly suffering wives of Fort Hood, played by Kate Bosworth, Sarah Wayne Callies and Karina Ortiz. The choice that his episode’s title refers to - choosing a side as hostilities escalate between the American “invaders” and the kamikaze-ready fanatics of his hometown - is the miniseries’ most wrenching moment by far and speaks to the emotional and political complexity and skill that the writers had at their disposal but only sometimes utilize. Through Jassim’s eyes, we see the transition of Iraq from brutal dictatorship to cruelty-filled chaos, as well as the constant trauma of ordinary Iraqis caught between pie-in-the-sky ideologies.
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MIPCOM: Traditional Players Show Strength in Transforming TV Market (Young later became a well known anti-war activist and the subject of the 2007 documentary Body of War.) Two hours stand out for their intensely moving narratives: the fifth, “The Choice,” which focuses on the Iraqi interpreter Jassim (Darius Homayoun), and the sixth, “A City Called Heaven,” which follows Army enlistee Tomas Young ( Noel Fisher) before and after Black Sunday, through his tragic journey from newlywed soldier to unhappily married paralyzed veteran. The rising number of wounds among the soldiers and the steady depletion of ammo gin up some urgency, but too many scenes force us to wait alongside the men for intervention without learning enough about who they are.Įach of Long Road Home’s eight episodes focuses on a different character, with extensive, Orange Is the New Black-like flashbacks fleshing out backstories.
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The multi-step rescue operation is somewhat hard to follow, robbing the series of tension it could certainly use more of. As the title implies, Long Road Home takes some time to pull the squads back in from danger. Michael Kelly and Jason Ritter give the production its obligatory boldface names, but their roles are relatively small and, in the overall scheme of things, pretty insignificant. The nervous, soul-sustaining chatter - funny, bro-y and sometimes deeply uncomfortable - makes for some of the miniseries’ best written scenes.įar less compelling is the activity back at the base. A pair of young dads (Jorge Diaz and Ian Quinlan) horse around, barely grown up themselves. The soldiers ask each other - rhetorically, then not so rhetorically - whether they could shoot a child. Another scoffs that it’s no wonder the insurgents fear death so little what would you have to live for if you lived in Sadr City? A third resents being made into a killer. One grouses about the Iraqis’ ingratitude toward the American peacekeepers. His grim austerity is contrasted by the bored flippancy with which the younger soldiers meet their tasks. Robert Miltenberger (Jeremy Sisto), a Kosovo vet haunted by war’s savagery who doesn’t let his fatalism keep him from protecting his brothers in uniform. Shane is both relatable and inspirational, a D&D fan who has to keep his smartest but most aggressive soldier (Jon Beavers) in line to ensure that there aren’t any unnecessary deaths on an already grisly and panic-stricken night. Initially saddled with a baldly manipulative prelude about leaving behind his extremely photogenic children, Bonilla proves a fantastic anchor of a sprawling tale with his level-headed, slightly dorky presence. His team holes up in an Iraqi home and is forced to take its family of four hostage.
Bonilla) and the two squads he’s leading are ambushed by heavily armed rebels. On a routine surveillance run around the city (with an automated cannon towering out of the humvee roof), Lt.
But I kept finding myself more often wondering what the characters made of their mission - which was sold to them as humanitarian peacekeeping - than absorbed in the umpteenth firefight between soldiers and insurgents. The mini is a lavish production, with chases, cityscapes, tanks and explosions vying for attention. That depoliticization lands The Long Road Home somewhere between an earnest brochure and a proper drama.
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