taking chance

By: Ryan Kramer

                This last week my class of juniors and I had watched the movie taking chance. I’ve seen the movie before. It’s a very good movie, one of the better movies we have watched in class. Taking chance is a great movie on the war in Iraq and it shows how many soldiers we had lost and how their family, friends, and fellow platoon mates reacted with their death. it had showed how sad everybody was. In the movie they had showed how they move the dead soldiers and how many people have respect for those who serve and also how many people had served. I like that I now know how they do everything and how much work it takes to transport a dead soldier.

            I had learned a good amount of lessons from this film. Such as what happens when a soldier dies in battle, how they transport them home, how they clean up their bodies and belongings to get them back to their family for the funeral, and many more that I will bring up throughout the blog.

            I liked how they have soldiers come to the person’s house in the middle of the night no matter what time it is and they tell the parents that there son had died in battle. I like how respective they are toward everybody and all there soldiers. I like how they go ahead and clean up the body and everything he was where at the time for the funeral back at his home town or where ever he was going to be barred. I liked the fact that to transport the bodies home from the country where they died back to the U.S. in a metal cast cut full of ice with them in a body bag.

            I liked to be able to learn about the struggle that the families and the escorts go through after a soldier dies. Like when the soldier dies the family greaves and then when the escort takes the soldier home he learns how many people know what he’s doing and how many people respect and show gratitude to the soldiers when there driving with the body such as in the movie when the escort and the guy from the church are driving the body and him to the church from the airport.

            I liked it that when he got there he had constantly learned more and more about Chance Phelps the soldier he was carrying to the funeral home. This movie showed how many people were there the day he died and how many miss him, how many people actually missed him and that he always had a memory that would live on.

            In the movie he had got to get multiple thank you from random strangers which had help him realize how big of a thing he is doing for his country and he community and even the community he is taking him to. They were all fond to see that he had brought him home safety to his parents’ home town. He was happy to get there and see that when he went to the bar how many people had recognized him and wanted to sit and drink and tell war stories with him till the bar would close.

            Then the next day when he had gone to the funeral he had met with the family before the funeral. He had given them all of his belongings and a note from his platoon officer. Then after he gave them everything he stood up and said that he was talked to a lot of people from about what hes doing and one flight attendant had given him a cross with Jesus on it and he said that “he thought the lady was giving it to him, but she was really giving it to chance”.