Shia LaBeouf Comes Home From War in ‘Man Down’ Trailer
It’s hardly a secret that the American military has no idea what to do with its veterans, often leaving the traumatized men to fall through the cracks due to a lack of support. As the newly released trailer for the upcoming action-drama Man Down amply shows, soldier Gabriel Drummer (Shia LaBeouf, mercifully free of his American Honey rat-tail) has more than his fair share of baggage when he returns home from an extended tour of duty in an unidentified conflict. But he’ll have to contend with more than poverty and the guilt over watching his brother-in-arms (Jai Courtney) die; turns out that while he was away fighting to protect it, America went right to hell anyway.
Even as he wrestles with the demons of his own violent past, Gabriel must go searching for his beloved wife (Kate Mara) and child in a post-apocalyptic hellscape. The trailer plays the dystopian element down, preferring instead to focus on the war-picture angle, perhaps in an effort to glom onto the general atmosphere of prestige that hovers around late-in-the-year releases. But director Dito Montiel (who most recently laid claim to the distinction of directing Robin Williams in his final onscreen role, in the wounding drama Boulevard) has mounted what is primarily an intense heat-of-war type experience, by the looks of the footage in the trailer. But the undisclosed events of “the room” that LaBeouf and his fellow soldiers stormed suggest further secrets.
Shia gets the chance to do some capital-A Acting, and Gary Oldman appears with Clifton Collins Jr. in supporting roles, so here’s hoping audiences don’t let this get lost in the late-year shuffle. (And for bonus points, you may recognize the music in the trailer — TV on the Radio’s ominous “DLZ” — as the same soundtrack from Breaking Bad’s instantly notorious "stay out of my territory" scene.)