Every so often a film comes around that, when you see it, you know will end up being an important cornerstone for a significant group of people. This year, films like I Saw The TV Glow made waves for being able to connect with the transgender community. Portrait of a Lady on Fire deftly portrays lesbian relationships in a way not many films can. Even a film like District 9 uniquely shone a light on how society handle immigration and immigrants. Enter Sheepdog, the newest film from writer/director/star Steven Grayhm, which he hopes will do for veterans what so little films have tried to do.
The film follows the story of Calvin Cole (Steven Grayhm), a decorated ex-service member who struggles with PTSD and traumatic brain injury after multiple tours overseas. Now, back home, he has struggled to put his life together, often spending time drunk with his army friend Darryl (Matt Dallas) or on prescription pills. Cole is separated from his wife Alice (Lilli Cooper) and their two kids.
Alice’s father Whitney (Vondie Curtis-Hall), recently released from prison and also a veteran, shows up at Cole’s house looking for Alice. But Cole and Whitney are intertwined at the same time that Cole attends court-ordered therapy with Dr. Elecia Knox (Virginia Madsen).
Obviously, this movie deals heavily in very hard themes. Fortunately, though, Grayhm and company do not shy away from these darker moments. It was clear that they wanted to make these moments visible, and that made it much more powerful. There’s no implication of consequences or imagined moments. We see it all and that’s hard. But it works very well.
It helps here that, across the board, the performances were terrific. Grayhm delivers a great leading performance that many vets who saw the films debut at the Boston Film Festival noted. But it was Vondie Curtis-Hall and Virginia Madsen who impressed me the most. Each give defining performances with so much depth and meaning behind it. They are veterans of the industry and it was clear why in Sheepdog.
I really appreciated how much of a focus the film has on small town America. The film was shot entirely in rural Western Massachusetts, and it shows. There is a clear small town feel that adds a ton of depth, as if saying “this could happen to anyone, anywhere”. I always appreciate when stories feel relatable in that way. Rather than seeing fancy rich people in big houses and nice cars do things average folks will never relate to.
But the biggest issue I had with Sheepdog is that it felt, at times, too dramatic. It adds to a sense of realism but for a long stretch of the film, the outlook seems quite bleak, especially for Cole. I think there could have been some plot beats cut to eat into that constant sense of dread. That and there are character features that don’t feel entirely necessary to the story. Virginia Madsen’s Dr. Knox, for example, didn’t need to be a therapist-in-training, working nights at a diner to pay for school. Sure, it adds depth to the character, but I wish either there were more moments to flesh that story out or move in another direction to achieve that depth.
Nonetheless, I enjoyed the over-arching story of Sheepdog, especially seeing Cole’s history unfold as he goes through his therapy and learns to overcome the challenges he faces.
Final Thoughts
Sheepdog is an incredibly powerful film that does a lot of things right. Grayhm and co-star/friend Matt Dallas spent the better part of 12 years interviewing hundreds of vets across the country to craft a story that would be meaningful to them. The result is a film full of hope and despair that accurately portrays the struggles that so many service members go through after returning home from war. Sheepdog is poised to do for veterans what films like Good Will Hunting did to help normalize therapy in America and show that there is always hope.
