A new film of hope takes on the military-service aftermath for many veterans.
In addition to the VA and numerous related state-based agencies, America boasts some 45,000 nonprofits dedicated to helping veterans and their families. Considering the expanse of public and private resources and programs and volunteerism being deployed, it is staggering how many of our men and women who have served in harm’s way suffer dramatically, a perception made real by one terrible statistic: Over seventeen American veterans commit suicide daily.
Into this perplexing societal misery comes Sheepdog, the work of writer/director/producer Steven Grayhm, who also takes a turn as the film’s principal character, Iraq War veteran Calvin Cole. The recently released movie is making elbow room in the public square, and sorely deserves plenty of that space; its story of individual trauma encapsulating a seemingly intractable national problem is powerful and compelling, even instructive. In many ways, it is more than a movie: Sheepdog is a conscious challenge to both suffering veterans and their fellow citizens who are obligated to render more than perfunctory care for those who have walked in the valley of death.
One man’s opinion: Movies of recent vintage are on the whole jarring visually, assaulting audibly, preachy orally, CG overwhelmingly. They require viewer endurance (and aspirin). Not here. Grayhm’s artwork is beautifully filmed and edited and scored—it affords patience as the characters and mood and plot develop—and corrals a flock of fine, even wonderful, acting performances. Its hard story of military veterans coping with battlefield trauma—force-multiplied by the cruelties and setbacks and bad decisions of everyday life—educates us about another reality: There is indeed hope to be had, and guides to help the lost locate a path out of trauma’s persistent trap.
(And if it’s not temerity to tag a serious story about post-traumatic growth as entertaining, then this well-crafted and inspiring film is precisely that.)
Sheepdog may even prove consequential. Through it, America’s large veterans community, especially those members who are in despair, confined to pill-popping as health care and considering suicide as a solution to their mental exhaustion, will surely be inspired to find curative alternatives—like those showcased in the movie—to rekindle the passion to live, and to emerge from the long darkness.
Another maybe: Sheepdog could inspire open-minded and nimble veteran-health nonprofits to adopt into their missions those effective, non-pharmaceutical therapies that are touching and recalibrating the traumatized.
This quite good, passionate, and humane movie is meaningfully different from other cinema fare. Whether it intends to or not, Sheepdog indicts a culture of excessive crudity, noise, virtue-signaling, political street theater, and the undermining of civil society. For these and many more direct reasons, Sheepdog deserves plentiful eyeballs and a long box-office stay.
About the plot: Sheepdog takes place in the blue-collar Massachusetts town (blissfully free of “pahk ya cah” accent) where Cole struggles with his latest setback: The paper plant has closed, and he has lost his job (and we find out, his family). Opportunities do not abound, but trouble does: Fortified by a handful of pills washed down by the hard stuff, he severely beats an innocent dad. Hard time beckons, but instead comes a guardian angel—the arresting police officer and Cole’s once hockey teammate, played with nuance and authenticity by Dominic Fumusa—who by force of will works to get him into treatment (court-ordered by a judge who is not so much lenient as she is wisely compassionate), a possibility enabled by the victim’s tender mercy (he will not press charges, if . . . ) and the seriousness of Cole’s service-related injuries. Memory loss, seizures, a gluttonous diet of prescription meds, and a war-savaged body is the price paid for having endured “multiple traumatic brain injuries” while fighting bad guys in the Middle East. Purple Hearts are not the only things that await the many military sheepdogs who protect the American flock.
Cole’s therapist, Dr. Elecia Knox, who has chops in helping those tormented by their “combat crisis,” is played with great grace by acclaimed actress Virginia Madsen. She is absolutely believable—what a great performance she gives. So does Vondie Curtis-Hall, Cole’s surprise-appearing father-in-law, a career Marine (Gunnery Sergeant Whitney St. Germain) whose murder parole hearing opens the movie, and Matt Dallas, who plays Cole’s BFF, Darryl Sparks, cheerful and boozy and soon another horrible statistic.
Truth be told, no actor in Sheepdog phones it in.
There is a lot that goes on in this film, including a tragedy that surely outweighs all the misery Cole saw and endured in his many tours of duty—no spoilers will be shared here (find out for yourself). The main- and subplots intersect to make clear an important message: There is real help to be had for veterans. Of course, one needs to be fortunate enough to fall into the one-on-one trained therapeutic care of the kind Dr. Knox provides, and then there is the requirement to discern and take advantage of the rare lucky breaks that find their way even into even those lives lived behind 8 Ball.
It’s refreshing that Sheepdog has no bad guys—that would have been a convenient script go-to. Grayhm’s story is about piling-up and interweaving circumstances and lives—his characters are complex instead of cartoonish and flat. Who’s to blame is less a priority of the movie than is explaining the path out for those warriors who have been trapped in trauma and choked by its slow strangulation, even years after discharge. Hence the VA, typically the focus of public criticism of veteran mental health care, and thus an ideal bad-guy candidate for a movie about such, gets minimal slaps—it is, after the all, the place which provides Cole his actual lifeline.
It’s hard to recall a better recent performance than that given by Grayhm, whose Sheepdog character rushes nothing and refrains from keeping the volume set at ten. He convincingly mixes small, real moments—of wise-ass humor, of friendship and paternal love, of restraint and humility—with the palpable misery that overhangs his past and present. His initial treatment with his therapist, Madsen, and their ensuing toe-to-toe blowup, is especially well done, and, for Cole, course-correcting.
The movie is also a project. Grayhm wrote, directed, and produced—one wouldn’t be surprised if he also played the music—and his company, Team House Studios, has a determined mission to make quality TV and movies while “empowering military veterans in front of and behind the camera.” Something large and good—and entertaining—has been achieved with this movie, by these artists and people of good will.
Maybe it’s due to getting old, but I find myself increasingly saying, out loud, that I wish I had another hand, for this or that chore. Actually, three hands would come in, well, handy, right now—because Sheepdog very much deserves more than just two thumbs up.
