The Last Full Measure

A Pentagon staffer is assigned to look into why a medal was never awarded to a medic who died in Vietnam. He takes it for bureaucratic drudgery. As he talks to the men who survived, why the case sat for thirty years comes out. The film gives the war in flashback but its real interest is the present: old men still inside that day and refusing to speak about it. Todd Robinson wrote and directed. It follows the real story of William H. Pitsenbarger. Christopher Plummer, William Hurt, Ed Harris and Peter Fonda are in the cast, and it was among the last films for Fonda and Hurt. Before watching: the film openly plays for emotion and the bureaucratic thread sometimes turns formulaic. The combat is direct and bloody.