Two Soldiers (2003)

Visually, this reminded me a little of “Field of Dreams” (1989) meets “The Waltons” with lots of soft-focus photography and a score from Alan Silvestri that I doubt even he can recall. It’s about a tightly-knit and poor American farming family who find that elder son “Pete” (Ben Allison) wants to volunteer to sign-up following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Despite reservations from his dad, off he sets to Memphis on the bus leaving his collection of bird's eggs in the care of his younger brother “Willie” (Jonathan Furr). Now this young lad dotes a bit on his sibling and swiftly decides - at the age of eight - that he is going to follow suit. He has to blag the 72c for his bus fare but when he gets to the draft office is given short shrift by the soldiers. Luckily he has his skinning knife, and there is also a kindly colonel (Ron Perlman) but what chance he can meet “Pete” again and/or join up? Though this is quite a nice feature, I couldn’t quite fathom what or whom it was for. “Furrball” delivers quite an engaging effort as the young traveller and there are some fairly substantial Hollywood names behind this film, but the story is remarkably thin. It’s not as if there is a draft forcing “Pete”, or the MPs arrive to wrench him, tearfully, from the loving arms of his family and so notwithstanding his obvious courage at stepping up to defend his country I just struggled to see the point of it all. It also makes for quite a long forty minutes, too.