James (Ryan O'Nan) returns home to Texas from the Iraq war with memory loss. He suffers from PTSD and roughs up his loving wife Sarah (America Ferrera) in his dream state. His mother Martha (Melissa Leo) is sick. He starts work at the slaughterhouse with his best friend Michael (Jason Ritter). He seeks help after another episode. Sarah leaves him. He visits fellow troubled soldier Raymond Gonzales (Wilmer Valderrama) who leaves his family to join him on a road trip.Relative unknown Ryan O'Nan gets the lead in this movie. I don't dismiss his quiet performance. I would rather Valderrama switch it up with the reserved explosive role. It would be more interesting to see him act outside his comfort zone. O'Nan has an everyman feel and sometimes fades into the background. It's a sincere movie with solid actors doing fine work.

Writer-director Ryan Piers Williams does, and he has been researching and reading about the subject for five years.The result is "The Dry Land". But how can after five years researching something not fair showed up !James characteristics is not match with what it have to be, not real. some one who is care about what happen to animals, but human. Compare to others James is more sensitive to small detail of life which is not acceptable, because he just came back from Iraq and what he have done there must made him more though than before and James doesn't remember what he have done in Iraq, that's whole idea to make the movie. Raymond Gonzales (Wilmer Valderrama) and Henry (Diego Klattenhoff) are quite close to reality of whom had war experience, Raymond still wants to be active and naughty as old days because he missed it and Henry wants to forget everything as he said: "Help me end this".It's better to show the war effect on both side simultaneously.

Yet another Hollywood portrayal of soldiers returning from war as a bunch of drunken psychotic screw ups. This liberal waste of film even includes references to Vietnam just to ram the point home.There isn't really a storyline in the film as it isn't necessary to make it's point. There is never any real dramatic basis for the problems with the character for which we are supposed to feel sorry so it is hard to feel anything.If you are really into this sort of thing, a better film (along the same lines) is "Brothers" which does a better job with the same basic theme.

Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is the source of many ongoing casualties of war. While not a condition restricted only to actual battle, the disorder has become increasingly well understood, even if not always well diagnosed and treated. The Dry Land explores the deep pain and disorientation that affects returning Iraq war veteran James as he tries to reacquire "normal" life in Texas. James becomes increasingly dysfunctional and desperate in the face of normal life.The melancholic beauty of the film lies in the telling of this story through a highly personal struggle. We experience the effects on James' community of wife, extended family, friends, acquaintances, and others along the way. The horror of war is artfully portrayed without a single flashback to events in military service. This made the movie more effective as a probe into the actual effects of PTSD. We have seen plenty of war footage elsewhere, but not nearly enough of war's effects in day to day lives of the many victims. In reality, we are all the victims of war in one way or another. People like James pay an extremely high price, and our whole society in diminished through all the ripple effects.The Dry Land exposes a reality of war that we all need to consider, and hopefully translate into action. James' family and friends are ineffective in all their efforts to help, the military appears in a reasonable but impotent light, and no answers are proposed. James really struggles alone despite attempts to lift him. Ultimately we likewise must struggle alone in many ways. The ancient Hebrew prophets cry out again and again against violence and injustice. We readily visualize the immediate effects of violence in blood and killing, but the entirety of the toll is much greater and deeper. "But they do not know how to do what is right," declares the LORD, "these who hoard up violence and devastation in their cities" (Amos 3:10). There is a devastation that still comes into our own cities, far from the killing fields of war. Will we ever count the real cost?