In many ways, The Lucky Ones and Stop-Loss could have been the same movie. Both are about a group of soldiers at home on leave. While home, the soldiers must face a world that is not quite the same as when they left as well as the fact they aren't quite same as when they left either. The soldier who has completed his service must answer the question: What now? The one who has survived more tours than the odds say he should finds himself seriously weighing his life against his commitment to serve. And in both movies, the consensus of most of the characters is that whether on the battlefield or at home, really, they're just trying to survive.

But although Stop-Loss and The Lucky Ones have many similar elements, they are actually quite different movies. While Stop-Loss does a good job of bring humanity to a political statement, politics and war are squarely at its center from beginning to end. Conversely, although The Lucky Ones is being offered up as a dedication to our troops and "another one of those war movies," its story moves humanity to the forefront and the war to the background. And where Stop-Loss could have easily been re-titled The Doomed Ones, The Lucky Ones offers up less a tragic look at the situation as a sometimes dramatic, sometimes comic message of hope.

At its core, The Lucky Ones is a movie about brokenness and healing. Upon their return from their tours, all three soldiers we meet soon after the movie begins are suffering from injuries they sustained on the battlefield. Colee (Rachel McAdams) was shot in the leg. TK (Michael Peña) took shrapnel to his groin. And Cheever (Tim Robbins) underwent back surgery after an accident involving a port-a-john. Although the three do not know each other when the movie begins, when all their flights are canceled, they decide to drive across the country together. And as their journey progresses, it is brokenness and pain of a more universal sort that comes to the surface.

Although Cheever's back may hurt, it is his failing marriage and inability to provide for his son's education that weigh him down the most. Although TK is definitely not happy about his injury's effect on his ability to perform in the bedroom, his injury almost points to his deeper struggle with who he thinks he's supposed to be and his felt need to live up to that. And although Colee serves as more of carefree comic relief for much of the movie, in her almost naïve optimism she reveals her deep need to believe that she is not just lucky, but in fact worthy of being saved by someone who loved her. Not just here, but here with a purpose and a value and a reason.

At one point in the movie, Colee confronts TK about not telling his girlfriend about his injury saying, "Seems to me, if you can't tell your soul mate the truth, then she's not your soul mate." Later Colee herself is crushed by the discovery that someone she may have very well considered her soul mate was less than truthful with her. But the beauty of The Lucky Ones is that although Colee, TK, and Cheever all struggle with being honest about their brokenness, between the three of them, all is laid bare.

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