{"id":133713,"date":"2026-04-16T23:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/militarytimes\/uncategorized\/2026\/04\/16\/american-solitaire-puts-a-veterans-invisible-wounds-front-and-center\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T16:29:17","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T16:29:17","slug":"american-solitaire-puts-a-veterans-invisible-wounds-front-and-center","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/militarytimes\/off-duty\/military-culture\/2026\/04\/16\/american-solitaire-puts-a-veterans-invisible-wounds-front-and-center\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018American Solitaire\u2019 puts a veteran\u2019s invisible wounds front and center"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Joshua Close has played a lot of roles. He\u2019s been in FX\u2019s \u201cFargo,\u201d \u201cKillers of the Flower Moon\u201d and Netflix\u2019s \u201cWayward.\u201d But nothing quite prepared him for playing Slinger, the combat veteran at the center of the film \u201cAmerican Solitaire,\u201d which hits select theaters Friday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Close drew on his own family to find the character. His cousin served multiple tours in Kandahar, Afghanistan, as a special forces member, and one conversation stuck with him. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cHe said he had to go back on his third tour because he didn\u2019t feel safe at home,\u201d Close told Military Times. \u201cHe felt more comfortable being in situations like Kandahar because he knew who the people were around him. He knew how to behave.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That kind of detail is exactly what writer-director Aaron Davidman was after. A first-time feature director, Davidman spent years traveling the country talking to people about guns, violence and the cost of military service before writing the script. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A conversation with a former Army captain who served in Iraq and Afghanistan for more than a decade became the seed of the story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cHe just impressed me with the real layered, nuanced, complex relationship to service, firearms, healing, reintegration,\u201d Davidman said. \u201cI decided to focus a story on a guy like that. What would it be like to follow a trained warrior and a reintegration through their eyes, through the experience of the veteran?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The result is a film that resists the chest-pounding war movie template.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"> Slinger comes home from Afghanistan wounded and estranged from his young son, adrift in a country he trained to protect but no longer recognizes himself in. The film examines how, for some veterans, post-traumatic stress disorder and reintegration grief don\u2019t manifest dramatically, but instead quietly erode a person from the inside. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Co-stars Joanne Kelly and Gilbert Owuor round out the film\u2019s central trio, each character at a different point on the road back. Owuor said the dynamic mirrored something true about group identity and the loneliness that can live inside it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWhen you look closer and start to examine the different members in the group, you realize that even for them, that can start to break down depending on where you are in the journey,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I think that\u2019s a very scary place to find yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Kelly drew on her own family, as well, including a cousin who deployed four times to Afghanistan as a nurse. The preparation opened a conversation between them that had never happened before. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI think it was one of the things I love about this job, the constant learning about humans, about different lives,\u201d Kelly said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Davidman has partnered with impact agency Picture Motion to build post-screening discussions into the release. It\u2019s a deliberate response to the isolation the film depicts, and to a broader cultural moment the filmmakers believe demands a quieter kind of conversation than the one usually surrounding guns and military service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWe\u2019re not holding a screening, we\u2019re convening,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For Davidman, the most revealing research didn\u2019t come from one-on-one interviews but from watching veterans talk to each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWatching these brothers and sisters share their stories, and they may not have even served at the same time or in the same branches, but there was a shorthand that was so informative,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That earned specificity shows on screen. \u201cAmerican Solitaire\u201d doesn\u2019t reduce its protagonist to a symbol. Slinger is a man trying to figure out who he is once the structure that defined him is gone, a challenge <a href=\"https:\/\/www.militarytimes.com\/pay-benefits\/military-benefits\/health-care\/2015\/11\/16\/5-questions-philosopher-explores-warriors-moral-anguish\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"\" title=\"https:\/\/www.militarytimes.com\/pay-benefits\/military-benefits\/health-care\/2015\/11\/16\/5-questions-philosopher-explores-warriors-moral-anguish\/\">researchers and clinicians<\/a> have long identified as among the hardest parts of coming home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI hope that people feel there is an accurate portrayal of veterans and of three-dimensional human beings going through real experiences,\u201d Close said, \u201cand that they can relate and feel less alone.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cAmerican Solitaire\u201d opens in select theaters Friday and is coming to VOD at a future date. More information at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.americansolitairefilm.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"\" title=\"https:\/\/www.americansolitairefilm.com\">americansolitairefilm.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Aaron Davidman&#8217;s film follows a combat veteran as he navigates the challenges of returning home from Afghanistan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":112437,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":91,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":{"4":{"categories":["military-culture","off-duty","daily-news-roundup","newsletters"],"primary_category":"military-culture"},"5":{"categories":["military-culture","off-duty","daily-news-roundup","newsletters"],"primary_category":"military-culture"},"6":{"categories":["military-culture","off-duty","daily-news-roundup","newsletters"],"primary_category":"military-culture"},"7":{"categories":["military-culture","off-duty","daily-news-roundup","newsletters"],"primary_category":"military-culture"}}},"categories":[91,16],"tags":[],"coauthors":[4132],"class_list":["post-133713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-military-culture","category-off-duty"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"ZANXA5TONVD3LJRDEZS2KSDGME","arc_canonical_url":"\/off-duty\/military-culture\/2026\/04\/16\/american-solitaire-puts-a-veterans-invisible-wounds-front-and-center\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented 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