G.I. Jesus Reviews

Veteran producer-director Carl Colpaert bites off a lot more than any one movie can chew in this ambitious but rambling look at one soldier's struggle with PTSD — Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. Having completed his first tour of duty in Iraq, Corporal Jesus Feliciano (Joe Arquette), a Mexican national who's been serving in the U.S. Marines in exchange for citizenship, returns home to California to his Dominican wife Claudia (Patricia Mota), their 4-year-old daughter, Marina (Telana Lynum) and life he no longer feels part of. When he questions Claudia about the new flat-screen TV, the cappuccino machine and the other expensive luxury items that now their humble trailer-park home, Claudia coyly tells him that they're gifts from Fred (Wes W. Thompson), a "friend" who owns the salon where she's been helping her stylist friend, Vanessa (Wanda Rovira). His jealousy piqued, Jesus goes to bed and dreams of Iraq, but his anxieties are no longer restricted to just his dreams. The following day at a gas station, Jesus is approached by Mohammed (Maurizio Farhad), an enigmatic Iraqi whom Jesus begins to see wherever he goes, and who also seems to have intimate knowledge of what Jesus did over in Iraq. The problem is that Jesus is the only one who sees Mohammed; to any onlooker it appears as if Jesus is talking to himself. Stranger still, Jesus is summoned to the home of Colonel McIntyre (Bill Steele) who, over drinks and a viewing of what can best be described as "combat porn," offers him a bizarre deal: Jesus can either finish out his contract with the U.S. military by returning to Iraq in one month, or accept the Colonel's initial $10,000 "gift" and agree to join an elite squad of black op marines dedicated to fighting battles in Central America behind the collective back of Congress. If he doesn't care for either option, Jesus can go right back to Mexico. As the hallucinatory quality of Jesus' post-war life — and his paranoia — intenisifies, one thing becomes clear: Jesus is suffering from PTSD. Colpaert's low-budget effort is peppered with bizarre touches — like an impromptu game of musical chairs at McIntyre's home — that only make sense after a pointless mid-point twist that softens a lot of the pointed comments the film made before it. Whether or not it's all meant to be the ramblings of a tormented brain, the film does capture a deep, if incoherent, mistrust of just about everything. News reports remind Jesus of the role the U.S. intelligence forces and Pepsi Cola are reported to have played in the deadly overthrow of Chilean president Salvador Allende. A doctor confesses that he and his colleagues have a mutually beneficial arrangement with pharmaceutical companies who regard returning soldiers as ideal guinea pigs for drug testing. More than once, it's noted that U.S. foreign policy has often conveniently intersected with U.S. business interests. Nothing, however, is treated in much depth, not even what the film is ostensibly about: the controversial recruitment of so-called "green-card soldiers," non-citizen immigrants who risk their lives fighting in the U.S. military in hopes of gaining citizenship. The first U.S. soldier to die in the war in Iraq, Jose Antonio Gutierrez, was one such soldier. The victim of friendly fire, his story is told in the acclaimed 2006 German documentary THE SHORT LIFE OF JOSE ANTONIO GUTIERREZ.