Stray Dog Film Review (Rendezvous with Madness Film Festival)

“That motorcycle there, that’s my shrink.  You got to do something to feel alive.” –  Ron “Stray Dog” Hall

December 18^th, 2014:  The parking lot of a Dollar General somewhere in Southern Missouri isn’t the traditional venue for a group of leathered-up bikers to be breaking into spontaneous heel kicking and line dancing to the Cupid Shuffle . . . but here we are.  In this part of Missouri resides a rolling thunder of a different kind.  The notion of caravans of hard charging, Harley riding, shine sipping, gun totting honky-tonk bikers traversing America’s highways and byways you already know.  But the weather beaten, Spanish speaking, war suffering, dog loving, computer savvy, blended family man version, you probably don’t.  Then again Ron “Stray Dog” Hall moves to the beat of his own drum by carving out his own piece of Americana the only way he knows how.  Part easy-rider part journey for salvation, the prevailing narratives around family, love, patriotism and hope for Ron remains forever constant.

The cost of war still hijacks so many living vets long after their war has ended and Ron was no exception. Two tours of duty in Vietnam will do that to any man; the first as an engineer and the second in combat with the 4th Infantry Division.  Nobody ever talks about the third and most difficult tour which is the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) he wrestles with daily.  So to help suppress that inner angst, Ron, anchored by his vet biker brothers and sisters takes part in the cross country Run for The Wall Vietnam Memorial ride to Washington D.C. every year.  With his upbeat and deeply religious new wife Alicia Soriano along for the ride Ron’s south of the border sensibility has found a new home in Missouri.  Filmmaker Debra Granik has successfully deviated from the mind-numbing cliché driven stereotypes that saturate current genre characters by cutting into a large slice of a deeply troubling reality facing American veterans.  That being the dehumanizing anxiety  surrounding unaddressed mental illness in “Stray Dog”.

As owner/operator of the rural threadbare At Ease RV Park, poverty here hides in plain sight. Portly and on the backside of sixty, Ron’s hardscrabble life on the margins became the unspoken mantra at the beginning of each and every day.  What made life bearable was the loving union and soulmate he found in Alicia.  Granik makes their relationship the centerpiece of her canvas from which a raft of colours flow.  A charming bilingual mash-up of Spanglish is the connective tissue that draws you into their life.  In the era of Obamacare and the uproar surrounding the recent Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) scandal this narrative could have easily veered to inside the beltway rhetoric, partisan politics or obfuscation on patient deaths.  But this isn’t about headlines and bylines it’s about experiencing the actual trickle-down effect when the VA doesn’t get it right in Washington. Granik methodically serves up the collateral damage one agonizing story at a time further reinforcing America’s need for a more row bust social safety net.

Bearing witness to deep seeded revelations and emotional breakdowns during therapy right through to de facto counseling sessions on the side of the road, Granik shows Ron’s true vulnerability both alone or with fellow vets.  “It was all so unnecessary,” he says of the war.  Stray Dog is still haunted by actions in which he participated there.  “I was far too young to be put in a leadership position,” he states.  There are things for which he refuses to forgive himself because he believes this would dishonor those he hurt and/or killed.  As a result true solace for Ron only comes in the form of endless repatriation, memorial and wreath laying ceremonies he attends while journeying down the winding roads of life.