Badland on AllMovie

A veteran of the first Gulf War who later went on to serve in Afghanistan and Iraq discovers that returning to civilian life after the trauma he endured is but an empty dream in director Francesco Lucente's harrowing drama. Years ago, when he served in the first Gulf War, Jerry (Jamie Draven) was a patriotic Marine reservist driven by a desire to protect his fellow countrymen. Later, despite being embittered by the broken promises of the military and still not having received the respect that he so badly craved, the civically minded father of three is redeployed to Afghanistan and Iraq only to be irreversibly damaged by the horrors of war. Now Jerry has returned home to his wife and family, struggling beneath the poverty line in a cramped trailer and devastated by night terrors. Jerry's wife, Nora, is unsympathetic to her husband's plight, and soon begins stashing their children's newspaper-route earnings in order to fund an escape. When Jerry discovers that Nora has betrayed him, the atrocity that he commits proves so shocking that even the most seasoned war veterans will recoil in horror.