Taking Chance

By interesting contrast to The Hurt Locker and made in the same timeframe, we have Taking Chance (2009), a little movie starring Kevin Bacon for which he got a best actor award from the Screen Actors. Bacon is on screen for the whole thing playing a Marine colonel who volunteers to escort the body of Chance Phelps, a lance corporal killed in Iraq, home to Wyoming. He takes on the job in the mistaken belief that the kid was from his hometown in Colorado, except that's just where he enlisted. Bacon starts the trip not quite sure what to expect, but is met by respect and caring at every turn, from the airline clerk who upgrades his flight to first class, to the baggage agent who brings him a sleeping bag when he insists on keeping watch overnight, to the pilot who asks a planeful of people to wait so that the colonel and lance corporal can get off first, to the men of the VFW in the small town in Wyoming. Quite a nice, and very moving, little movie, speaking about the direct cost of war and respect for those who pay it.