The story is of a soldier returning home after a tour of duty, and he is duly messed up, not coping, running his relationship with wife and children into the ground. "I'm drowning," he says to his brother in a pivotal scene toward the end.

Now, American veteran soldiers - or veterans anywhere, for that matter - only too often have a hard time re-adjusting to civilian life. They have learnt to kill (for country, freedom, glory) but also to save their lives (I have written an essay on SOLDIERS - come on, do read it, it's short.) If the choice is, 'either you get killed or I get killed', a good soldier is trained to know what to do. We all know that, and everybody also knows that once they come home, their experiences have taken 

a toll that may find expression in depression, violence and the inability to cope with the rather mundane life post combat. 

That exactly is the case with captain Sam Cahill (very well played by Tobey Maguire.) So far so good.

In the movie we know what the experience has been, that devastates him. If you read this story without knowing about the movie, you'd be forgiving for thinking, well, it doesn't take rocket science to work that out. In the news we hear regularly about atrocities that would churn even the hardest soldiers' stomachs - you wonder how anyone can come through those experiences sanely: Women, children killed by accident; the meeting of Taliban leaders in a village compound that you had bombed, turning out to be a wedding - 36 dead, incl. bride and groom - etc. etc.

But the movie offers a different plot. And I come back to the q & a: Why would Americans re-make the movie? Because the twist in the story suits them, that's why. And the twist in the story is: Sam is destroyed by guilt over having brutally killed (bludgeoned to death) his comrade - a private who was captured together with him - so as to save his own life. 

Frankly, I was very, very annoyed by that plot detail.

What's the problem with that story line? (And I acknowledge that the narrative would probably have worked much better in the original Danish movie; which I didn't see.) The point is that the scenario is perfectly safe for Americans - their soldier is tortured and forced at gunpoint to commit an unspeakable atrocity. Of course he's devastated and consumed by guilt. 

The makers of the movie (which, I guess, is made with the co-operation of the US Army) will prefer that plot, because they do not need to go into a much more delicate direction, where the soldier would be destroyed by the work he is committed to do in his normal line of duty. Which includes causing 'collateral damage.' Like women, children, brides, grooms.

I would like to see that movie when it comes out. Probably should be called, 'What The Hell Are We Doing Here?'