Review of Where Soldiers Come From (2011) by Caxa — 26 Feb 2015

The film follows the lives of 3 men as they join the military, are trained and deployed to Afghanistan as well as their lives after coming back home. It is a true story, none of the people in the film are actors,and the premise of following a group of soldiers through their military career is extremely interesting. However, the film is Oscar bait in its worst form. The film attempts to tug at your heart strings by depicting the soldiers as victims of an unjust and unfair society struggling with various disabilities. However, all 3 soldiers had drug problems before even joining the military, a fact which is brushed over and never addressed, and by all right should have disqualified them from service (perhaps that is why they ended up in the national guard instead of active army). Even before being sent to Afghanistan all 3 soldiers in the film are demoted for drug use and 2 of the 3 and up being dishonorably discharged due to their continued troubles. Now you may use the excuse that Afghanistan caused them to slip into drug use, but again, they had recorded drug problems before deploying. The film also goes into depth about the injuries the 3 soldiers sustained, which never cause them to be sent back to the US for treatment. However, the film does mention that several other soldiers from the same unit were severely wounded and had to be evacuated from Afghanistan to Germany because of their life threatening injuries, maybe a small focus on them would be helpful. Also, here is no need to complain about being deployed. No one enjoys it, but joining the army in 2007, in the middle of the Iraq serge, and just as Afghanistan was picking up, you pretty much knew what you were getting into.

Overall the movie follows 3 soldiers who are under non judicial punishment most of their career due to various reasons such as failing drug tests. These soldiers are intend to blame all their troubles on the military (even though as I said many times their drug use started before they were deployed). Never getting a second opinion from the 200 other members of the unit, in fact watching this film you would think they are fighting in Afghanistan by themselves as no single other soldier is ever even asked a question. Frankly the military had 1.5 million members, and choosing 3 who ended up getting kicked out causes for a severely biased documentary, and is in fact a slap in the face to the rest of the 200 plus people from their unit who managed to successfully complete their service without getting demoted or discharged.