All those 20-something women with The Notebook listed as their favorite movie on MySpace may soon have a new top tearjerker. Rachel McAdams has signed on to The Return alongside Tim Robbins and Michael Pena, working under Illusionist director Neil Burger.
Burger’s script, with Dirk Wittenborn, is nicely topical: three soldiers returning from the war in Iraq must deal with their injuries and alienation from the world they left behind. But in true movie fashion, each of the trio also has a purpose.
McAdams wants to return her boyfriend’s guitar to his family because he saved her life, and presumably died in the process. Tim Robbins wants to play the casinos to fund his kid’s college tuition. And Micahel Pena’s a little pissed off as his injury ‘threatens his sexual function’ (says the Reporter) and he’s got to deal with that and the wife.
The Return will be the best post-war movie ever if Pena’s story is a variation on the old ‘pregnancy without intercourse’ story, where a soldier’s testicle is pierced by a piece of shrapnel which then lodges in the ovary of an 18-year old girl who was, actually, 100 feet from him at the time. But it probably isn’t.