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Afghanistan, 2016

 "My Dead Friend Zoe" begins with a Rihanna clip:


When the sun shines, we'll shine together.
Told you I'll be here forever. 
Said I'll always be your friend.
Took an oath, I'ma stick it out to the end....

Two friends, Zoe and Merit, are killing time. There is a little drop of sexual harassment from a colleague; there is a threat of death on the horizon. Also, the radio stops working.

Zoe sort of likes her stint in Afghanistan; she has a sense of structure and purpose. Back home, she felt that school wasn't her thing. She thinks she might return to war right after completing her commitment. But Merit has academic ambitions, and she wants more for Zoe. She persuades Zoe to take a shot at civilian life.

This doesn't work out well; adrift, drinking heavily, caught in a dead-end job, Civilian Zoe begins to contemplate suicide. Merit isn't answering her phone in a dependable way. A gun appears on a coffee table; you can fill in the blanks.

Later, in mourning, Merit allows her own life to skid off the rails; she accepts a low-maintenance job and performs badly, so badly that she almost crosses a line toward homicidal negligence/manslaughter. Sentenced to VA counseling, she won't talk. And yet she wants to. And yet she won't. This pattern persists until a mentor--Morgan Freeman--makes some important disclosures. And you can predict what happens next.

Not the world's most original script--but the movie is helped by Natalie Morales and especially by Ed Harris. You can anticipate the sobering statistics at the end; many, many servicemen/women die after struggles with mental illness. Seven in ten of these suicides involve a firearm. Talk therapy is helpful; we know this because several of the actors on screen are, in fact, former servicemen and servicewomen. They have lived through their own versions of Merit's story.

This movie isn't perfect, but it has a beating heart, so I'm happy to have seen it.

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