It's troubling when the quote at the end of a film ("Wars begin where you will, but they do not end where you please," Niccolò Machiavelli) is more profound than everything preceding it. In exploring the challenges facing combat veterans returning from Iraq, HOME OF THE BRAVE is as well-intentioned as it uninsightful. After a well-staged action sequence, involving a violent ambush in an urban area during a humanitarian mission, sets up the plot, the storm of almost offensive clichés begins with the haunted soldiers returning home, only to find rejoining the day-to-day more difficult than expected. There are a handful of affecting moments, most involving a competent Jessica Biel as an amputee struggling to fulfill her duties both as a high school gym teacher and a single mother, but the script is so stale and the direction so plodding, with occasional lapses into absolutely bizarre teritory, such as when a returning medic who has turned to booze for solace (played by an uneven Samuel L. Jackson) wrestles his surly son onto a table to tear out his lip ring. For what it's worth, the film does sympathize with returning veterans (I half wonder if the screenplay was truly penned by a board at the Department of Veteran Affairs, which would explain the good heart, but also the bad form), but it's simply not enough. In the end, it's too dopey and unoriginal to warrant more than a dismissive shrug, and certainly never as provocative or entertaining as it hopes to be. I am disappointed. D.