Taking Chance

Lieutenant Colonel Michael Strobl is a desk officer who did not go to Iraq, and it sits badly with him. Compiling the list of the dead he sees a name: Chance Phelps, a lance corporal, from his own home town. He volunteers as escort and takes the coffin to Wyoming. The film is almost entirely that journey: an aircraft hold, the back of a truck, a highway, a motel room. The most notable thing is that it says nothing about the war. There is not one sentence for or against. What it shows instead is the detail of a procedure: how the coffin is wrapped, how the uniform is folded, who salutes at each transfer. The reactions of strangers along the road carry all the film's feeling. Ross Katz directed and co-wrote with the former Marine officer Michael Strobl, from the journal Strobl kept himself. Kevin Bacon plays Strobl. It screened at Sundance on 16 January 2009 and aired on HBO on 21 February 2009. It took nine Emmy nominations, and Bacon won the Golden Globe and the Screen Actors Guild award for the role. Who it is for: anyone who likes quiet films built on ceremonial detail, and Kevin Bacon. Who it is not for: anyone expecting a political position. The film never enters the war itself, the pace is very slow, and some scenes aim straight at the tear ducts.