Cease Fire Reviews

Considering this low-budget effort from 1984 was dug up and rushed into release to capitalize on Don Johnson's popularity in TV's "Miami Vice," CEASE FIRE is much better than you would expect. Johnson is an unemployed Vietnam vet with a loving wife, Lisa Blount, and two small children. He meets another vet, Robert F. Lyons, at the local unemployment office, and the two men become fast friends. Unfortunately, the friendship has jarred some repressed memories of Johnson's experiences in Vietnam. He is plagued by terrifying flashbacks and nightmares and starts drinking heavily. Blount, however, refuses to give in and decides to fight to get her husband back. CEASE FIRE deals honestly and openly with the problems of Vietnam vets. While the central performances are strong, the script is a bit weak. Some of the exposition is clumsy and underdeveloped, and at times the film feels like the textbook for a PBS docu-drama. Script problems aside, CEASE FIRE must be commended for honestly exploring the problems of Vietnam vets rather than taking the exploitation route by portraying them as crazed, violent maladjusts or war-hungry killing machines.