Ed Williams | Through the Shattered Lens

In 1988’s To Heal A Nation, Eric Roberts stars as Jan Scruggs.

When we first meet Scruggs, the year is 1971 and he’s taking his seat on a commercial airliner. When the blonde woman sitting beside him starts to flirt with him, Scruggs mentions that he’s happy because he’s finished up his tour of duty in Vietnam. Upon hearing that Scruggs is a Vietnam vet, the woman immediately requests to be moved to a different seat.

Eight years later, things haven’t gotten much better. Scruggs works for the Department of Labor in Washington D.C. He’s married to Becky (Glynnis O’Connor) but he’s struggling to deal with the past. He drinks too much. He has trouble sleeping. He doesn’t feel like he can open up about the things that he saw in Vietnam because nobody wants to talk about it. He was one of the thousands of people who served in Vietnam who now feel as if they’ve been abandoned by their country. However, after attending a showing of The Deer Hunter, Scruggs has a vision of a monument that that features the name of every American who was killed in the Vietnam Conflict.

Scruggs devotes the next several years of his life to getting the monument built, appealing to both the government and private citizens for funding. At first, everyone treats Scruggs and his efforts like a joke. Even some fellow veterans feel that Scruggs is pushing too hard and that he’s just going to end up embarrassing himself. But Scruggs refuses to give up and finally, with the support of a senator (Laurence Luckinbill) and a Texas millionaire named H. Ross Perot (Conrad Bachmann), Scruggs is able to make his dream a reality.

Based on the true story of the struggle to build the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., To Heal A Nation features a young Eric Roberts giving a nervy but likable performance as Jan Scruggs, a man who becomes so obsessed with building a monument to those who lost their lives in Vietnam that he occasionally seems like he’s close to going over the edge himself. It’s a good film for Memorial Day and one that still feels relevant today. The way that Scruggs was treated after returning from Vietnam is the way a lot of our veterans were treated and continue to be treated after returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. We love our soldiers when they fight in popular wars that result in a definite victory. When they serve in an unpopular war, they’re often deserted by people who don’t want to be reminded of recent history. One can certainly see that in the attempts by the national media to gloss over what happened during our final days in Afghanistan. This film is a reminder that no one should be forgotten.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

A group of college students all live in a California apartment complex that’s owned by Jake Mondello (Gianni Russo), who also owns a restaurant and sponsors a beach volleyball team. From the description that I read of the movie’s plot, I thought there would be a lot more beach volleyball and, from the title, I thought there would be a lot more thrills. Turns out I was wrong on both counts.

It’s pretty obvious that this was a pilot for a tv show that was inspired by Melrose Place. A lot of characters are introduced and they’re all shallow but pretty. Just like with Melrose Place, everyone has a drama and everyone has someone that they like but who they can’t tell about their feelings. Casper Van Dein is the most recognizable person in the cast. He plays a rich boy who likes to play volleyball and who falls for a poor girl. Other characters include Jacqueline Collen as a former volleyball star who is going back to college and who is being stalked by her ex (Jack Scalia), Catherine Lazo as the med student who loses her scholarship, and Ria Pavia as an abrasive science student who falls in love with her new roommate (Mushond Lee), even though he’s gay. Ernie Reyes, Jr. plays Koji, who is a computer nerd who says stuff like, “I just got a new CD-rom game.” He’s so good with computers that the police turn to him to help track phone calls and match finger prints. Denise Richards appears for two seconds and smiles at Casper. Gianni Russo is the worst actor in the movie but everyone loves Jake because Russo also wrote the script.

This was largely plotless and pointless. Casper was nice to look at but I didn’t care about any of the characters. There is a big beach volleyball game at the end but it only lasts for a few minutes and it was impossible to tell who was winning. One important character is taken out by a kill shot but no one notices. Watching the movie made me hate both the beach and volleyball.