Continuing the two themes of actors who I once didn’t like but who, in recent films, have begun to win me over (Miles Teller), as well as films about characters suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) after serving in wars in the Middle East (Thank You For Your Service) comes the critically panned Man Down, a movie that I don’t ever recall being in the theatre and didn’t know existed until a good six months after it was released. Earning a score of just 17% on Rotten Tomatoes, director Dito Montiel (A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, Fighting) delivers an emotionally disturbing, uneven film about a character traumatized by a specific incident that happened on his single tour. Man Down stars Shia LaBeouf (Lawless, Honey Boy) in what might be his finest performance to date. He stars as United States Marine Gabriel Drummer, who, after a raid and clearing of a house gone wrong in a village in Afghanistan, tells his story to Captain Peyton (Gary Oldman – Darkest Hour, The Dark Knight Rises), a military superior. The critics said that this movie exploits PTSD compared to a more subtle film like Thank You For Your Service (which also has the advantage of being based on a true story, something that Man Down lacks). While I can see that, especially in the film’s final act, I disagree. War is hell. It’s one of those things that we don’t have to experience firsthand to believe. But we need to experience or be close to someone who experienced it to understand it. When we can’t, we sometimes turn to books, television, or movies, hoping they will portray a true picture. That’s what Montiel did here, even if most of his critics disagreed.

The movie is challenging to follow at times. It takes place in what appears to be six different periods. If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a hundred times: when a movie effectively captures flashbacks and can go back and forth between the present and the past, it can be truly amazing (500 Days of Summer, Manchester by the Sea, Blue Valentine, Shutter Island, For Love of the Game, and more. Unfortunately, when the transitions between past and present are done poorly, a movie with good intentions becomes a disaster (The Time Traveler’s Wife, The Story of Us, The Lovely Bones, etc.). Man Down was ambitious, but it did much more right than wrong. Gabriel is our central character. He is in every scene in the film. We can differentiate where he is and at what time based on whether or not he has a thick beard, as well as his mental state. Also central to the story are his wife Natalie (Kate Mara – Transcendence, The Martian), his young elementary school-aged son Jonathan (Charlie Shotwell – Captain Fantastic), and his best friend Devin (Jai Courtney – Unbroken, Terminator Genisys).

I’ll try to lay out five of the six time periods. I will leave out the fifth due to spoilers. The first and the one that we never return to is Basic Training, where Gabe and Devin go through the grueling process of Marine training. Now, this is by no means Full Metal Jacket. Still, we get the sense that Gabe is a little soft, not mentally, emotionally, or prepared for war, and needs a drill instructor like Sergeant Miller (Tory Kittles – Stop/Loss, F/X’s Sons of Anarchy) to bring out the soldier in him. These short but effective scenes help shape Gabe into the person he needs to be heading to war. We also learn of the strong bond that Gabe and Devin established early.

The second period is just before he leaves for war. We see him bond with Natalie, Jonathan, and Devin. Gabriel loves his family. He’s sweet and gentlemanly. He drives Jonathan to school and learns that his son is being picked on because his friends witnessed his mom tell him she loved him. So, rather than getting too upset about the potential ribbing/bullying his son is receiving, he rationalizes it as something that will pass and decides that they will use a code word to tell one another, “I love you.” It will be the phrase, “Man down.” Gabriel gets Jonathan a puppy for his 8th birthday before leaving for deployment. We see his carefree nature, loving devotion, and innate goodness. Is this manufactured for war? There is a poignant scene where Natalie and Devin watch Gabe show off the puppy with Jonathan to the neighborhood kids. After a moment of silence, Devin says, “He’ll be alright,” referring to being a soldier. But will he? Devin is supposed to be deployed with Gabe, but he has a full-on cast after punching his arm through a window. It isn’t explained. It’s a plothole, for sure. And we know right away it’s to keep Devin back home. We’ll learn the reason later in the film. I figured out why, and you probably will, too.

The third period is the war in Afghanistan itself. Devin’s arm eventually is healed, and he makes it over into the same squad as Gabe (ironic, I know). Gabriel has made himself into a good soldier and leader. He’s homesick. While he might not have a career as a soldier (we still don’t know his motivation for joining the war), he’s showing us that he can be good at whatever he does. He’s proven that by making it through basic training, being a loving husband and great father, and excelling as a soldier. However, in the blink of an eye, his life changes forever. He makes an incorrect decision, and the aftermath will haunt him for the rest of his days.

The fourth period is set in a post-apocalyptic America after destroying most of the earth. It is just Gabriel and Devin now, and they are trying to track Jonathan’s whereabouts. The habitat is entirely unrecognizable. We don’t know how far in the future this is set. We know that everything is color-drained and looks somewhat dreamlike. There are no traces of human life until they encounter a grifter named Charles (Clifton Collins Jr. – Triple 9, Traffic), who Gabe is convinced, through a series of clues, that he knows the whereabouts of his son. Yet Charles refuses to give any information. If this all seems a little strange, it’s purposeful, and Montiel did a very effective job of incorporating this more surreal scene with other parts of the movie that are much more concrete. But the payoff is worth it in the end.

The fifth period involves the one I mentioned in the first paragraph. Gabriel talking with a military health professional (Oldman), back on domestic soil, about the events that transpired in Afghanistan. He’s performing a psychiatric evaluation on Gabe to assess his mental health, and he encourages him to relive the trauma. We can experience the events that transpired with Gabe in telling his stories for the first time. Captain Peyton can bring out the emotions in Gabe, and we learn firsthand the hell he witnessed in the aftermath and the ramifications. So quickly, our lives can change, and that’s what happened with Gabe, whose world was turned upside down.

As mentioned, I will only discuss the sixth period to say it’s the most far-fetched component of the movie and one that we needed to prepare for and seemed very out of sequence. There was some time between Gabe’s meeting with Captain Peyton and the film’s finale. If you put together the pieces, you CAN figure out what was happening during that time, but it isn’t cut and dry and leaves much to be desired. That’s the wrong term to use here, but we went from Point A to Point E without clearly passing by Points B, C, and D. I’m uncertain it worked. I wanted things at this point to be more linear, and most of the critics who didn’t like this movie would agree.

But I come back to a couple of things. First, there is no formula for dealing with PTSD. It isn’t fair to think that this movie didn’t shed the right light on or exploit it. You can’t hold a Litmus Test to this type of movie. Is what transpired the norm? I don’t know. I certainly hope not. But it certainly isn’t outside of the realm of possibility. Heck, the final credits of this movie tell us that 20 US combat veterans commit suicide each day (note: Gabriel does not commit suicide in this movie). PTSD is a significant problem, so let’s make movies like this and talk about it more so that we, as a society, can better understand it. Secondly, LaBeouf just knocked this out of the park. At age 31, he could already retire and say he had a pretty darn good career. Yes, we’ll always remember him from the Transformers franchise first, but he has taken on some difficult roles since then and done well with them. For the most part, it seems like he’s put the money he made from the Transformers movies in a safe place so he can do more of these independent movies, which he’s not earning nearly the same paycheck. But the role of Gabe in Man Down was a hard one because he had to play the same character and, really, six different points of his life that were shaped or hardened by experiences both in the war and outside of it. And he did a fabulous job. Unfortunately for LaBeouf, the Transformer movies have been a collective disaster. So many of his other ones that resonate with the critics have yet to be seen by most of the movie-going audience.

Plot 8.5/10
Character Development 9.5/10
Character Chemistry 8/10
Acting 9/10
Screenplay 8/10
Directing 8/10
Cinematography 9/10
Sound 7.5/10
Hook and Reel 8.5/10
Universal Relevance 10/10
86%

B

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• The Hurt Locker
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