Taking Chance (2009): Seventy-Seven Minutes of American Decency.

There are no battle scenes in Taking Chance.

No enemy appears. No shots are fired. No one delivers a speech about whether the Iraq War was right or wrong.

The war is already over for Chance Phelps.

The 19-year-old Marine was killed in Iraq on Good Friday in 2004. Taking Chance tells the true story of the journey that followed: from the military mortuary at Dover Air Force Base to his family in Wyoming.

Kevin Bacon plays Marine Lt. Col. Michael Strobl, who volunteers to escort Phelps home.

That is essentially the entire movie.

Sounds boring, right? It’s anything but.

Strobl travels beside the casket. He inspects every transfer. He watches every loading and unloading. He makes sure Chance is never left alone and that every detail is handled properly.

In most movies, these procedures would be something to hurry through before the real story begins.

Here, they are the story.

This is where I would normally give you more details. I won’t. I don’t believe in spoiling movies, and in almost any other film, the small moments along this journey wouldn’t qualify as spoilers. In Taking Chance, they are the story. You should encounter them as Strobl does.

The movie isn’t really about how Chance Phelps died. It is about how a country receives him afterward.

Strobl later said that he wanted the American people to be the film’s main character. They are.

The America shown here isn’t loud or theatrical. It doesn’t congratulate itself. It simply knows what ought to be done and does it.

That may be why the film feels so powerful. It presents patriotism without slogans and national unity without pretending Americans agree about everything. Whatever anyone thought about the war, Chance Phelps had served his country and died beside his fellow Marines.

Everything else could wait.

A Marine needed to be taken home.

Taking Chance lasts only 77 minutes. It contains almost none of the things Hollywood ordinarily believes a movie needs. Yet it says more about duty, sacrifice and the character of the American people than films three times its size.

Watch it.

And thanks to Happy Captain (@EODHappyCaptain) for mentioning the movie on X and prompting this edition of The Picture Box.