On the heels of their surreal, adrenaline-fueled, psychologically complicated tours of duty, soldiers are now discovering an intense process of transformation is needed to once again lead ordinary, everyday lives at home. Indeed, Time Magazine recently published a study that reveals that one out of every four Iraq War veterans has arrived back in the U.S. with a mental or physical disability.

Yet, at the same time, the nature of the mission in Iraq and the tight-knit bonds that soldiers have formed there also made re-enlistment rates for U.S. troops in Iraq the highest in the military and many who have been there are compelled to go back. It seems clear that whether newly released veterans are struggling to get back to normal lives or trying to return to the war, there is one uncontroversial truth behind all their experiences they are profoundly life-altering.

It's this powerful, utterly unexplored territory that accomplished director and producer Irwin Winkler approaches with "Home of the Brave" and its linked stories of four National Guard soldiers from Spokane, Washington.

Genesis of Film

Irwin Winkler, whose prolific roster of films as a producer have garnered four nominations for Best Picture Oscar Awards and who most recently directed the acclaimed De-Lovely starring Kevin Kline as Cole Porter, often looks for inspiration in current events. The idea for "Home of the Brave" began after he read a newspaper article about the unique experiences of Iraq War vets returning home a subject he quickly realized had been largely missing from American storytelling. Winkler wanted to change that.

While stories about Vietnam homecomings didnt hit the Hollywood screen until long after the war and its attendant controversies had ended, Winkler felt it was time to address the immediacy of the issues facing Iraqi war veterans right now.

Wyler's Best years of Our Lives

I felt it was an important subject that no one had dramatized, comments Winkler. One of my favorite films was always William Wylers World War II film The Best Years of Our Lives, and in that same vein, I thought it would be a compelling idea to create a story that would explore the lives of different veterans coming home now.

Winkler continues: Of course, Wylers film takes place entirely at home, but I wanted to also have part of our film take place partly in combat in Iraq to really show what modern battles are like. I saw the film as being about what happens when you have people who spend a great deal of time putting their lives in unpredictable danger in a modern war zone and then suddenly try to return to normal life, having been changed in every conceivable way.

Pro-Soldier Movie

The idea was equally intriguing to Winklers long-time producing partner Rob Cowan, who saw an opportunity to make a war film unlike any in recent memory. In contrast to a lot of contemporary war movies, particularly movies about Vietnam, we wanted to make a movie that would be very pro-soldier, he explains. Its a move about people doing a very difficult job, one that is apolitical in the sense that they are simply doing what they have been asked to do to support their country. In a sense, the characters in our film become real heroes when they return back home, because they each go through an extraordinary journey to come back to society after all theyve seen and been through personally, physically and emotionally.

Story Needed to be Told

Now committed to the idea, Winkler approached Mark Friedman, a writer with whom he was already working on a forthcoming film, about crafting an original screenplay based on real veterans experiences. We all felt it was a story needed to be told, recalls the writer, and we agreed that we wanted to show the most even-handed and widest possible spectrum of what diverse soldiers experienced in the war and the journey home. We knew we didnt want the story to focus on just one character. But the crux would be telling the films different stories authentically and for that, Friedman dove into intensive research in the summer of 2004 from his hometown of Baltimore, MD, where he was also teaching screenwriting at John Hopkins University. He started by reading not only all the available books about U.S. soldiers in Iraq as well as major magazine articles, but also pulling stories about returning soldiers from small-town newspapers to get a real Heartland perspective. Then he began the true core of his research: interviewing as many soldiers and veterans as he could.

Cooperative Military

The military was very cooperative in giving me information and introducing me to veterans who were willing to talk about their war experiences and what it was like to come home afterwards, Friedman explains. Ultimately, Friedman spoke to nearly two-dozen returning soldiers of all ages, genders and backgrounds, including some who returned wounded and others who had returned only to make the decision to re-enlist. He notes: Talking to the soldiers, I realized how little I had known about what they really go through and how hard they work and what they feel. It was eye-opening to hear about their experiences and I wanted to get all that into the story.

Soldier-Focused Research

This intimate, soldier-focused research especially helped Friedman to forge the films four main characters Samuel L. Jacksons haunted doctor Will Marsh, Jessica Biels tenacious and later traumatically wounded female soldier Vanessa Price, Curtis 50 Cent Jacksons emotionally scrambled Jamal Aiken, and Brian Presleys grief-stricken Tommy Yates -- each of whom faces circumstances familiar to Iraqi vets all over the country.

Throughout each of their distinctive tales, he emphasized the disorienting nature of the sudden transition from the primal ferocity of skirmishes in Iraq back to the complexities of family life in America. When youre in the kind of battlefield situations that exist in Iraq, youre in a high-tension, high-adrenaline pressure cooker all the time, he notes. Then when you try to come back to an ordinary, banal existence, the little everyday things other people take for granted just dont seem to make sense. Its that aspect of re-integration, of going from the heat of battle back to daily life, that forms the heart of the screenplay.

Once the first draft was completed, Friedman worked closely with Winkler to hone the story into a tight dramatic structure that shifts between moments of gut-wrenching combat action and the characters attempts at finding peace with themselves.

Shifts between War and Home

For Winkler, the storys interwoven shifts between war and home were key to the films style and posed an exhilarating challenge as a director. Of all the many films Ive made, Ive never actually made an action film with combat scenes, he notes. It was an especially fascinating experience going from the music and dancing of De-Lovely to shooting detailed war scenes in Iraq where cars are exploding and people are shooting at one another. What I found is that action sequences require a lot of teamwork and the director becomes a kind of general commandeering all the talent. Yet that too was contrasted with the more intimate scenes in Spokane, where the story truly becomes about the human relationships changed and touched by war.