Against the explosive backdrop of the Iraq War, young soldiers Brandon Bartle (Alden Ehrenreich) and Daniel Murphy (Tye Sheridan) forge a deep bond of friendship. When tragedy strikes the platoon, one soldier must return home to face the hard truth behind the incident, and help a grieving mother (Jennifer Aniston) find peace. With a compelling mix of battle action and poignant drama, The Yellow Birds is an unforgettable movie whose power resonates long after the final frame.
Watch it once, and you could come away a little underwhelmed; watch it twice, and you begin to suspect that its almost humdrum rhythms are exactly the point.
You may want for something to hold on to, but Tye Sheridan and Alden Ehrenreich slip through the fingers, both seeming uninterested and restless to move on to other projects.
The familiarity of this story ... certainly doesn't help in combination with Lowery, Porto, and director Alexandre Moors' non-specific approach to the material.
Making a late appearance in the Iraq War movie cycle, the impressively acted "The Yellow Birds" manages to leave an affecting mark even as it constantly struggles to find a distinctive voice of its own.
The film seems chiefly informed by other movies; the generic combat scenes are staged with the same shaky handheld "urgency" as every other Iraq War picture, while the characters have no psychology beyond the usual innocence-lost arc.
"The Yellow Birds" ... takes the form of a detective story, albeit one in which the mystery is as drearily protracted as it is ultimately unpersuasive.
Aims to be poetic and insular, but it's not a particularly compelling feature, slogging through the same old sights and sounds without inspiration to be anything more than disappointingly predictable.
