Talk:The Veteran (2011)

Nice Work

Is this film any good? I've watched the trailer but the comments said this film was rubbish; it read reviews on Amazon and the reviewers liked it, so I'm torn between preordering it on DVD or not bothering ;) --Taurus96 05:15, 20 August 2011 (CDT)

I enjoyed it. The story is pretty confused, and has a nonsensical conspiracy branch, but the combat authenticity as well as the Solider character depth impressed me. I imagine a Michael Mann fan would enjoy the ending. --Jackie.45Cal 16:45, 12 September 2011 (CDT)

I thought this movie was pretty bad, but the final shootout was decently filmed and enjoyable. That faint praise aside, I did not think that this movie's final shootout was comparable to Heat at all, aside from the frequent use of fast dolly shots to convey movement and distance. The big shootout in Heat was unrealistic but at least believable, whereas the shootout in The Veteran was both unrealistic and unbelievable Rambo-type idiocy (one guy with one M4 and four 30-round mags takes on an entire street gang armed with automatic weapons?)

Also, regarding the big conspiracy in this movie: Anyone who's the least bit familiar with the nature of the drug trade in Afghanistan (and sites like Prison Planet) won't regard the story as anything profound or interesting. I rented this movie expecting the story to be something like this: Traumatized veteran suffering from PTSD returns home and finds his neighborhood infested by drug gangs who remind him of the local opium-dealing militias he fought in Afghanistan. Because he's lost buddies in combat and now can't adjust to civilian life (i.e. can't meet women), he develops fantasy world where he cleans up the streets and becomes a big hero, and eventually becomes so attached to fantasy world that he tries to act it out by getting a gun and carrying out vigilante attacks on local gangsters. That story would have been cliched, too (essentially a modernized Taxi Driver), but in the hands of a competent director, it would have been infinitely better than the script that was used here. In this movie, the fact that the main character is a veteran at all is almost irrelevant (aside from explaining how he knows how to use weapons and fight hand-to-hand).

On a gun-related note, I'm pretty sure that I spotted a few more weapons in the final shootout that are not listed here. A few of the gangbangers had Beretta 92Fs, and I think one had a revolver of some type (maybe a Colt Python). -MT2008 10:38, 12 November 2011 (CST)

A couple of MAC-10s and other sub-machine guns were used in the final shoot-out also. Will screen-cap missing weapons as soon as I get it on DVD. Chris (or the name of Tony Curran's character), had, what I believe to have been, a Sig-Sauer P226 holstered at some point. Fixer