The Eric Roberts Collection: To Heal A Nation (dir by Michael Pressman)

Posted on May 26, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

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:

Days of Paranoia: Dark Blue (dir by Ron Shelton)

Posted on March 17, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

2002’s Dark Blue opens in 1992, with a decorated Los Angeles cop named Eldon Perry (Kurt Russell) holed in a hotel room with a shotgun and a pistol. Perry, who were learn comes from a long line of cops, should be happy. He’s about to finally get promoted. While Los Angeles is in the grip of the riots that followed the Rodney King verdict, Perry’s lifelong dream is about to come true. But, instead of celebrating, he’s a nervous wreck. Dark Blue shows us why.

Perry is the protegee of Commander Jack Van Meter (Brendan Gleeson), a corrupt cop who regularly encourages his men to harass, arrest, and even kill anyone who is suspected of having committed a crime. Van Meter and Perry claim that they’re doing what they need to do in order to keep the city safe. They look at a reformer like Assistant Chief Arthur Holland (Ving Rhames) and they see someone who has no idea what it’s actually like on the streets and who is more concerned with his own ambitions than anything else. However, Van Meter has a side operation going. Two of his informants (played by Korupt and Dash Mihok) regularly commit robberies that he sets up and helps them get away with. When their latest robbery leaves four people dead and one wounded, Van Meter assigns Perry and Perry’s young partner, Bobby Keough (Scott Speedman), to the case. Bobby is young and maybe not as cynical as Perry. But he’s also Van Meter’s nephew so the assumption is that he’ll play ball.

And, at first, Bobby does go along with whatever Van Meter and Perry say. When Perry unknowingly gets too close to the truth about what happened at the robbery, Van Meter orders Perry and Bobby to go after someone else. When Perry orders Bobby to execute an innocent man, Bobby does so and Perry takes the blame. (In one of the film’s best scenes, Bobby gives his statement about the shooting to Internal Affairs, just for the detectives to shut off the tape recorder and give Bobby a chance to make a better statement.) But when Bobby has a crisis of conscience and Van Meter reveals that depths that he’ll go to protect himself, Eldon Perry is forced to reconsider the life that he’s built for himself as a cop. With Los Angeles descending into chaos, Perry has to finally decide whether or not to play the game or to do the right thing.

There’s a lot going on in Dark Blue. Actually, there’s too much going on. The film is based on a story by James Ellroy and it has Ellroy’s traditionally dense plotting, full of duplicitous characters and macho dialogue. Not only is Perry dealing with the investigation, he’s also dealing with his frayed marriage to Sally (Lolita Davidovich). Not only is Bobby struggling with his ethics but he’s also struggling with his love for Sgt. Beth Williamson (Michael Michele), who is also Holland’s assistant and who also once had a one-night stand with Holland, pictures of which have gotten into Van Meter’s hands and which Van Meter plans to use to blackmail Holland into taking a job in Cleveland. It’s a lot to keep track of and, visually, director Ron Shelton struggles to capture Ellroy’s trademark prose. As a writer, Ellroy’s jittery style can get readers to accept almost anything, no matter how complex or potentially disturbing. Ellroy has no fear of alienating the reader. Shelton, on the other hand, has a much more gentle style and it’s not a good match for Ellroy’s vision of a world gone mad. The film mixes Ellroy’s moral ambiguity with Shelton’s rather predictable liberal piety and the end result never really comes together. Shelton doesn’t seem to be sure what he wants to say with Dark Blue.

That said, this film does feature an excellent performance from Kurt Russell. Russell plays a character who is both good and bad. Perry cares about his partner. He cares about his family. He’s loyal to the police department. His methods may be extreme but he’s also taking criminals off the street. But Perry is also thoroughly mired in Van Meter’s corruption. Perry trusts Van Meter because Perry considers the police force to be his family. His shock at being betrayed is one of the more poignant things about the film and Russell captures the moment perfectly.

Dark Blue has a lot that it wants to say, about morality, policing, and race relations. It doesn’t really work because Ron Shelton was the wrong director to bring James Ellroy’s pulp sensibility to life. But it does provide Kurt Russell a chance to show us that he’s one of our most underrated actors.

Playing Catch-Up With 6 Quickie Reviews: The Big Game, The Connection, Graduation Day, McFarland USA, Taken 3, and War Room

Posted on December 26, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Here are 6 more reviews of 6 other films that I watched this year. Why six? Because Lisa doesn’t do odd numbers, that’s why.

The Big Game (dir by Jalmari Helander)

In The Big Game, Samuel L. Jackson plays the President of the United States and you would think that fact alone would make this film an instant classic. Unfortunately, this film never really takes advantage of the inherent coolness of Samuel L. Jackson playing the leader of the free world. When Air Force One is sabotaged and crashes in the wilderness of Finland, President Jackson has to rely on a young hunter (Onni Tommila) from a group of CIA agents disguised as terrorists. Tommila does a pretty good job and the scenery looks great but at no point does Samuel L. Jackson says, “Check out this executive action, motherfucker,” and that’s a huge missed opportunity. As for the rest of the film, it takes itself a bit too seriously and if you can’t figure out the big twist from the minute the movie starts, you obviously haven’t seen enough movies.

The Connection (dir by Cedric Jiminez)

Taking place over the 1970s, the French crime thriller tells the largely true story of the efforts of a French judge (played by Jean Dujardin) to take down a ruthless gangster (Gilles Lellouche) who is the head of one of the biggest drug cartels in the world. The Connection run for a bit too long but, ultimately, it’s a stylish thriller that does a very good job of creating a world where literally no one can be trusted. Dujardin, best known here in the States for his Oscar-winning role in The Artist, does a great job playing an honest man who is nearly driven to the point of insanity by the corruption all around him.

Graduation Day (dir by Chris Stokes)

Hey, it’s another found footage horror film! Bleh! Now, I should admit that this horror film — which is NOT a remake of that classic 1980s slasher — does have a fairly clever twist towards the end, that goes a long way towards explaining a lot of the inconsistencies that, up until that point, had pretty much dominated the film. But, even with that in mind and admitting that Unfriended and Devil’s Due worked wonders with the concept, it’s still hard to feel any enthusiasm about yet another found footage horror film.

McFarland USA (dir by Niki Caro)

McFarland USA is an extremely predictable but likable movie. Kevin Costner plays a former football coach who, while teaching at a mostly Latino high school, organizes a cross country team that goes on to win the state championship. It’s based on a true story and, at the end of the film, all of the real people appear alongside the actors who played them. There’s nothing about this film that will surprise you but it’s still fairly well-done. Even Kevin Costner, who usually gets on my last nerve, gives a good performance.

Taken 3 (dir by Olivier Megaton)

Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) is back and he’s killing even more people! Fortunately, they’re all bad people but you really do have to wonder what type of dreams Bryan has whenever he goes to sleep. In Taken 3, Bryan’s wife (Famke Janssen) has been murdered and Bryan has been framed. He has to solve the case and kill the bad guys while staying one step ahead of the police (represented by a bored-looking Forest Whitaker). Neeson does all of his usual Taken stuff — the intense phone conversation, the steely glare, and all the rest — but at this point, it has literally been parodied to death. If you’re into watching Liam Neeson kill ugly people, Taken 3 will provide you with adequate entertainment but, for the most part, it’s but a shadow of the first Taken.

War Room (dir by Alex Kendrick)

I saw the War Room in Oklahoma. It was being shown as part of a double feature with The Martian, of all things! Anyway, this film is about an upper middle class family that hits rock bottom but they’re saved by the power of prayer! Lots and lots of prayer! Seriously, this film almost qualifies as “prayer porn.” Anyway, the film was badly acted, badly written, incredibly heavy-handed, and ran on way too long but, on the plus side, it did eventually end.