Alden Ehrenreich And Jennifer Aniston Can’t Overcome The Familiarity Of ‘The Yellow Birds’ [Sundance Review]

PARK CITY — The United States military has spent most of this century engaged in combat operations in both Afghanistan and Iraq. There have been so many stories told about the soldiers and their missions in these Middle East war zones that they’re practically its own genre. That’s not to say there aren’t more stories to be chronicled or that they can’t be re-told from new and different perspectives. It’s in this context, however, that Alexandre Moors’s “The Yellow Birds” debuted at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival Saturday with an air of familiarity that hinders its emotional impact.

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The film is divided into four different chapters, but considering how much it jumps back and forth in terms of flashbacks, their use is superfluous at best. The overall story actually sounds more interesting if you drop the flashback structure altogether. It begins and ends with two young Army recruits: 20-year-old Brandon Bartle (Alden Ehrenreich) and 18-year-old Daniel Murphy (Tye Sheridan). During training camp, Murphy latches on to Bartle as a friend, and both soldiers fall under the wing of their commanding officer Sergeant Sterling (Jack Huston), who, frankly, is a little off-kilter. They are sent into battle right out of the gate and, as you might expect, Murphy is shell-shocked by the horrors of combat. At some point during their deployment, Murphy disappears and is classified by the Army as “missing.” Bartle returns home suffering from a combination of guilt and PTSD, although audiences will likely only figure out the latter because it’s a constant in many veterans’ experiences and has been a recurring aspect in many of these Middle East war movies.

Murphy’s mother (Jennifer Aniston) doesn’t believe the military’s story about her son’s whereabouts and decides to reach out to Bartle in hopes that he’ll tell her what really happened. Earlier in the film, she’d asked Bartle to look after Murphy, and that responsibility is clearly weighing on him. Meanwhile, Bartle’s own mother (Toni Collette) cannot comprehend her son’s behavior since returning — behavior that includes weeks on end of just sleeping in bed all day and getting intoxicated when he’s not. Eventually, a military investigative officer (Jason Patric) enters the mix to force the truth to come to light.

The Yellow Birds

“The Yellow Birds,” which was originally scripted by David Lowery and then rewritten by R.F.I. Porto, is Moors’ second feature after 2013’s “Blue Caprice,” and like that drama, he displays a unique eye for memorable compositions. Unlike “Caprice,” however, “The Yellow Birds” could use a lot more of them. Despite an indie budget, he is able to fashion realistic war scenes using Morocco as a backdrop for what we assume is Iraq (the year the movie takes place or where they are deployed is never articulated). These are beautifully rendered moments, but it doesn’t make the movie feel as unique as it should. Surprisingly, it’s the scenes in the United States that are less inspired than you might expect. But those are the least of the film’s problems.

Despite a strong performance from Sheridan (the best in the movie), the film’s structure makes it difficult to get emotionally involved in Murphy’s fate. There is a paper-thin romantic subplot that plays out at the very end, but it’s hard to make up for the tedious narrative thread that has Bartle depressed back home, a storyline that often brings the film to a grinding halt. That’s partly because while Ehrenreich is generally effective in the role, he’s almost too subdued considering he’s effectively the main character.

As for the rest of the cast, Aniston does a fine job conveying her character’s pain in a realistic manner, and Collette vacillates between brilliant and over-the-top moments that just validate the theory that she’s well on her way to becoming the next Glenn Close. Huston portrays his character so intensely that you quickly find it hard to believe he’s actually in charge of anyone in the Army or that he’s in the same movie Sheridan and Ehrenreich are shooting (he has one moment in a German strip bar that is especially cringeworthy).

Like all complicated global conflicts, filmmakers will be telling stories about this era for decades to come. And there are elements of “The Yellow Birds” that should equate to a unique cinematic experience. Unfortunately, like Bartle’s return home, you leave the theater somewhat dazed, confused and thinking of what went wrong. [C]

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