Last Flag Flying: Review

I watched the film Last Flag Flying last night.

 The story unfolds at a bar where two former Vietnam veterans catch up on old times and past regrets. We quickly figure out the impromptu meeting has a larger purpose. “Doc” Shepard lost his son in the Iraq War recently and wants his Vietnam buddies to help him bury him at Arlington. One friend of the Doc is a preacher (Laurence Fishburn) and one is a bartender (Brian Cranston). Tension between ‘sinner’ and ‘saint’ is the subtext as the three men help an old friend discover how to deal with loss. The conflict is played for laughs despite the very real difference in spiritual maturity between Sal (Cranston) and Mueller (Fishburn).

Apparently the trio got into trouble during the Vietnam War and Doc was the fall guy. He spent a couple years in the brig for his insubordination. The guilt over the incident still affects the three men, one of their fellow marines died during the debacle. The details are sketchy but come out in drips and drabs as the movie unfolds. I didn’t realize it at the time but this film keeps the characters from a 1973 movie The Last Detail, while changing the backstories. It isn't exactly a sequel but the characters would be familiar to anyone who saw that movie. 

Last Flag Flying manages to be somber and heavy but punctuated by hilarious incidents. Like when Sal (Cranston) jokingly hints to the Uhaul sales clerk that he and buddy Mueller (Fishburn) are working with Al Qaeda. He doesn’t give a return date for the rental truck, acts coy about the reasons for the truck and pays with a wad of cash. Homeland Security gets alerted and Fishburn is taken into custody for being a suspicious ‘holy man’. 

After Doc sees his son’s body he changes his mind about Arlington and decides to take the body to his hometown Portsmouth, New Hampshire. This scene, at the airport, changes the direction of the story and Doc quickly reverts to back to his anti-authority roots. Once he discovers the truth about his son’s death, killed buying drinks at a convenience store, he becomes disillusioned with the war. The Marines told him a different, more heroic version of the truth. He agrees to let the military pay for transport to Portsmouth via train after some haggling with a cartoonishly nasty colonel.

The trio ride the train while swapping old stories and generally complaining about their war, and the current one. Old men see war different than the young. The arguments they make have been made for millennia. Like the famous scene from All Quite On the Western Front (1930) where Paul lectures his propaganda spewing professor “He tells you ‘Go out and die’ Oh but if you’ll pardon me it’s easier to say go out and die than it is to do it.”

One particular scene from the train journey shows all three men talking with a young marine (Washington) who accompanies the body to Portsmouth.  

Washington: “I’d rather be fighting them over there than in our own back yard.”

Sal: Said to Mueller sarcastically “Sound Familiar?”

Mueller: “Oh, yeah”

Sal: “See we fought the commies on the beaches of Nam so we wouldn’t have to fight ‘em on the beaches of Malibu.”

Washington: “I guess it worked”

It’s a funny line but supports a larger truth that gets overlooked in good war/ bad war debates. The merits of war are easier to sort out after the conflict ends, but what isn’t easy is figuring out what might have been. History only tells us what happened in the war, never what might have happened without the decision to engage in it. Anti-war films always describe the ugliness of battle but can’t possibly say that without war things would have been better.

The ‘commies’ never attacked the Malibu beach but they would have likely put missiles in Cuba without the blockade. What happens after that? No one knows. We may not fight them here, Red Dawn style, but other considerations come into play.  There are too many variables to consider in conflict, including threats to allies and loss of influence, an enemy with larger territory and a new front from which to conduct terrorism. Mistakes are made constantly and overreach is a frequent problem of military campaigns to be sure. Telling a story from the perspective of former Vets who ran afoul of the leadership is a little like asking former Walmart employees who got fired, what they think about the company. Their view is certainly relevant, but it isn’t the whole story either.

Anti-war movies are small and focused, small because the tragedy of loss is personal. Films like Deer Hunter and Born on the Fourth of July show loss and transformation, from patriotic to bitter and wounded. Pro war movies (if that’s even a term) like The Longest Day and the Band of Brothers series keep the larger frame of the conflict front and center. We understand the big picture, allies, leadership, geopolitical calculation, strategic maneuvers, and enemy advances. If anti-war movies are like the board game Life, than pro-war movies are chess.

I generally liked the movie. The camaraderie between the Vets is funny and proves that despite the ugliness of war, long lasting friendships survive. A telling moment is when the three men meet the mother of the soldier killed in Vietnam. For years she believed the official report that her son was killed in action. They have a chance to set the record straight with her. They were with him when he died after all. How they handle the meeting tells the viewer a lot about truth in war and why it is so hard to talk about.