Toronto

How to Fold a Flag

(Docu)

By JOE LEYDON

A Heros Film production in association with Pepper & Bones Films and Impact Partners. Produced by Michael Tucker, Petra Epperlein. Executive producers, Josh Braun, Dan Cogan, Charlie Fink, Dana O’Keefe, Annie Roney. Co-executive producers, Diana Barrett, Suzanne Costas, Senain Kheshgi, Abigail Disney, Juliette Timsit, Caroleen Feeney.
Directed, edited by Michael Tucker, Petra Epperlein.
 
With: Javorn Drummond, Michael Goss, Cornelius Massey, Jon Powers, Stuart Wilf.
 

With "How to Fold a Flag," a diffuse yet fascinating account of four U.S. Army vets readjusting to civilian life, documakers Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein continue their sympathetic, insightful examination of individuals involved — as soldiers or civilians, willingly or otherwise -- in the Iraq War. Pic likely will claim admiring reviews and fest laurels as short-term victories. Looking ahead to the long haul, however, the response to their three previous docs on the subject suggests an uphill battle to win the hearts and minds of mainstream ticketbuyers.

Unlike "The Prisoner or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair" or "Bulletproof Salesman," Tucker and Epperlein’s latest effort comes across as a kind of sequel to their 2004 debut feature, "Gunner Palace," which focused on soldiers of the 2/3 Field Artillery unit assigned to one of the volatile areas in post-Saddam Baghdad.

Stuart Wilf, a heavy-metal rocker who figured prominently in "Palace," seems just as swaggeringly sarcastic when the filmmakers catch up with him back home in Colorado Springs. But even as Wilf offers a profanely funny explanation for why he joined the Army in the first place -- after he trashed a lavish home handled by his real-estate agent mom, his father offered him the choice of jail or enlistment -- there’s no mistaking the free-floating discontent percolating beneath the surface. When he insists he has left his Iraq experiences behind him, he sounds like he’s trying to convince himself more than anyone else. Meanwhile, his mom frets about his younger brother, currently on duty in Iraq.

Michael Goss, another war vet, is more forthcoming about his psychological scars. He admits that he competes as a cage fighter in Texas and Louisiana because he’s fired by a desire "to keep fighting something, someone." (He wears the names of fallen comrades on his training togs.) And he bitterly claims that, like many other vets, he was given a dishonorable discharge only so he wouldn’t add to the burden of VA hospitals ill equipped to handle so many Iraq vets suffering from post-traumatic disorders.

Javorn Drummond, a black vet intent on using GI benefits to finish college, faces a different set of problems with medical bureaucracies while attempting to aid his under-insured, cancer-ridden mother. And while clean-cut ex-Eagle Scout Jon Powers (a former Army officer who also appeared in "Gunner Palace") seems the best-adjusted of the docu’s four subjects, he’s the one who faces the heaviest fire while being "swift-boated" by opponents during his Congressional campaign in Buffalo, N.Y.

Tucker and Epperlein make respectfully savvy use of Powers’ campaign (and, to a lesser degree, Drummond’s efforts to help his mom) to give "How to Fold a Flag" some sense of narrative momentum. Overall, however, there is a distracting start-and-stop quality to the pic’s progress, and it doesn’t help that, fairly late in the final third, another subject, the father of a soldier killed in combat, is dropped into the mix. As they attempt to give equal time to every story, Tucker and Epperlein are unable to sustain the tight focus that "Prisoner" and "Salesman" so gripping.

Pic does suggest that each of its subjects will survive, and maybe even thrive, as they continue to distance themselves from what they did, and what was done to them, in Iraq. But for some of them, full recovery is a distant, albeit attainable, goal. At one point, Goss notes that an opponent once admitted to being "frightened" of fighting a vet with so many demons inside him. On the other hand, the pic doesn’t show Goss actually winning a match until he starts to exorcise a few of those demons.

While less stylistically flamboyant than either "Salesman" or "Prisoner," the pic boasts polished production values. Title comes from a carefully rehearsed ceremony conducted during military burials.

Camera (color, HD), Tucker; music, Dax Gary, Stuart Wilf; sound, Tucker, Epperlein. Reviewed on DVD, Toronto, Sept. 10, 2009. (In Toronto Film Festival — Real to Reel.) Running time: 85 MIN.