"The War" gives top billing to Elijah Wood and second billing to Kevin Costner. But the nominal lead is really Lexi Randall, playing Wood's older sister. Go figure.
Set in the summer of 1970 in the rural south (Juliette, Miss.), complete with familiar '70s pop songs in the background, the film focuses on the Simmons family . . . and mostly the kids, Lidia (Randall) and Stu (Wood), with Lidia offering a voiceover narration.
Costner and Mare Winningham play their parents, Stephen and Lois. Stephen is a stereotypical traumatized Vietnam veteran (see Forest Whitaker in "Jason's Lyric"), fresh from a stay in a psychiatric hospital, and Lois is his stalwart wife, holding down two jobs as they still barely eke out a living.
Stephen is troubled by nightmares and wants to purge himself by confessing to his son an incident that occurred during his tour of duty, which has troubled him for years. But it takes awhile before he can summon the nerve to do so. He's also rather cold to Lois - until Lidia gives him some teenage advice, which automatically warms him up.
Meanwhile, the kids go through the usual coming-of-age rituals, spending most of their time working on a huge tree fort, which they are building in an 800-year-old oak with castoffs gleaned from the local junkyard. They are also constantly harassed by the Lipnickis, a rowdy, filthy family of troublemakers who terrorize them at every opportunity.
Lidia also finds time to lecture a schoolteacher who has consigned all her black students to the back of the room, and at one point Stephen also saves the life of a fellow black worker. (All of this is a rather disconcerting and surprising continuation of Hollywood's condescending attitude that blacks in trouble have to be rescued by whites.)
Peace-loving Costner frequently preaches pacifism to his son, and most of the way, young Stu takes it to heart. But after a tragedy about two-thirds into the film, Stu takes a different route in dealing with the Lipnickis, resulting in an all-out "war" over possession of the treehouse.
Loaded with metaphors and anti-war, anti-violence and anti-racist posturing, "The War" is about a subtle as a rabbit punch. Written by first-timer Kathy McWorter and directed by Jon Avnet ("Fried Green Tomatoes"), the film has its heart in the politically correct place. And the performances are quite good by one and all. But a little subtlety could have made all the difference here.
"The War" is rated PG-13 for a considerable amount of violence and mayhem, as well as profanity.