By comparison, the first movie about the current Iraq war, Home of the Brave, was released in New York and Los Angeles on December 15th, and will expand to the rest of the country January 5. Releasing a war movie right now is a risky move — United 93 and World Trade Center resonated with audiences who had the time to reflect on those events, but without that distance, Brave's immediacy could be troubling. Do Americans want to see an entertainment product about the war when the horrors of the conflict are available on the nightly news?

It's a tough question, because the track record of topical war films is murky. Some have done well; others have bombed. (Sorry, bad choice of words.) The majority of Brave takes place outside of the Middle East. It's about the travails of four soldiers, played by Samuel L. Jackson, Jessica Biel, Brian Presley and Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson, after they return to the States. It's a theme films often visit to great acclaim: The standard-bearers are 1946's The Best Years of our Lives, which won seven Academy Awards, 1978's Coming Home, which won three, and 1989's Born on the Fourth of July, which earned two. Brave director Irwin Winkler first became intrigued by the topic after seeing a news program about soldiers at loose ends after returning from Iraq. "They talked about the parties people would throw for them, but I kept thinking, 'What happens when the party is over?'" he said in a recent interview with the Los Angeles Times.

Unlike the overt propaganda films of the World War II era and the Vietnam era anti-Communism films like John Wayne's 1968 The Green Berets, Brave professes to have no overt political message beyond an exploration of suffering after military service. It shows how after the battle is over, life in civvies can be just as harrowing: Jackson stews with a drinking problem, Biel adjusts to the use of a prosthetic hand, Presley mourns the death of his best friend, and 50 Cent suffers from unyielding guilt over an Iraqi woman he killed in the fog of war. (A quote from Machiavelli ends the movie: "Wars begin where you will, but do not end where you please.")