In an interview I saw of John Cusack, you really can't talk about Grace is Gone without also talking about Martian Child.  Both scripts were presented to John at similar times and from what I gathered, New Line was willing to pay good money for John in The Martian Child.  He like the script and played the part.  However he loved Grace is Gone and wanted that part in the worst way.  The other issue is look at the Producers.  There are no less than 18 producer credits for executive producers, producers of which John is one, co-producers and associate producers.  It took a big list of people to get make this movie.  Sadly it did not get the promotion and big play that it deserved.  So Martian Child hits the screens in Nov 2007 and Grace is gone in Dec 2007.  I'm thinking a Iraq war movie with a dead mom at Christmas...what are they thinking.

Grace is Gone is the story of a family where the wife is in the military and is deployed to Iraq.  They have two young girls one is 12 , Heidi, played by Shelan O'Keefe and the other appears about 8, Dawn , played by Gracie Bednarczyk .  Early on in the movie we find out that Stanley Philllips's ( John Cusack ) wife, Grace, has been killed in Iraq.  Inconsolable, Stanley doesn't know how to break the news to his girls. 

Cusack delivers a superb emotional character that is mild, unassuming, yet a loving,  soft spoken but strict, goal setting father who absolutely loves his two girls.  When he gets the news he drops everything, and asks the girls if they want to drop everything and go the"Enchanted Gardens" a theme park.  Heidi at once is suspicious , and for good reason this is way out of character for Stanley.  Finally, they proceed and one of the stops is his old home with an encounter with his anti war brother. That could have added a lot more drama to the movie but never quite takes off, the brother learns of the truth and he and his brother make up in the end and the quest moves on.  All the time Dawn is having a good time and Heidi is questioning the trip, and worse asking questions about her mom!  Back at "grandma's house" she had learned the truth about her father, he was the one that was gung ho about the military and was forced out because of bad eyes.  However that experience is where he had net his future wife Grace. 

There is quirky scene where we learn that Heidi has sneaking out at night time wandering the streets and one time actually meets up with a young man smoking a cigarette.  Heidi has one only to be caught by her father, who instead of getting really mad at his 12 year old daughter, takes her out and buys a couple packs and offers to have a smoke with her. How he teaches the anti smoking lesson through this is actually some great comedy relief in the movie and one real bright spot in the script.  The other more touching moment is he takes to Heidi and asks her to wake him if she can't sleep so he can talk to her.  " You'd do that for me?" an almost perfectly delivered line with appropriate shock in the voice. As a father I thought that great as well. 

As the movie lingers it starts to become obvious that Stanley is procrastinating and and not himself.  We know the end is coming and at some point, in the most loving of ways he has to tell his two daughters. 

As poignant as the movie is, maybe America was not willing to come to grips with this reality of women dying in war.  From a personal standpoint I have a special reverence for women that volunteer to be put in harms way and especially for women like in Israel that are drafted with their male counter parts.  All the more reason I was thinking we need a public service act in the USA. In my opinion we should have a mandatory service act for all youth that are citizens to serve the country , not all need to be in the military but an elite few will volunteer to not only serve but make a career out of it. 

No father is going to be left untouched in the final scenes.  The best thing I can say is that Stanley, no matter his lapse in parenting judgement  finally gets a grip and the courage to face his two girls. We know this scene is coming right at the beginning and the movie and script  although a little on the weak side, allow John Cusack to show how good a lead he can really be. 

Due to a poor release I had to wait until it was available on DVD. 

Highly recommended -AL