Filmmaker:Sandra Sabatino

Genre : Drama

Naïve single mom cannot afford drug rehab for nineteen year old son. She forces him to enlist in the Marines as a cheap way to get clean.

June 2001: single mom cannot afford drug rehab for nineteen year old son. By chance, she wanders into a Marine recruiting office at a strip mall. She has a naïve notion that she can force her son to enlist in the Marines as a cheap way to get clean. Weak bodied, virtuoso shredder guitarist, Danny Delaney, is flunking community college and losing the promise of a music career due to an Oxycontin addiction. Smart mouthed and spoiled, he turns, once again, to his mom to save his ass. His journey toward transformation is told through his boot camp letters, in which we meet the characters: Drill Instructor Sergeant Goode and Recruit Prattle. Over protective Sylvie takes matters in hand when his letters reveal unsettling information. To Danny's chagrin, she makes a personal appearance at boot camp and faces-off with a jaded Sergeant Major, Jack Morgan. Sylvie and Jack begin an intriguing relationship. The motif of firewatch - sentry on duty specifically guarding a person, place, object, or area in a non-combat area (such as a barracks); considered under arms but usually unarmed - appears intermittently through the actions of both Sylvie and Danny. Throughout the story, we watch Danny and his mom each struggle - he with the intensity of boot camp and overcoming an addiction, she with her unrelenting hope and anxiety that the USMC will "cure" her son. To the collective horror of all three characters, Danny's peacetime Marine Corps gig takes a dire turn in the final scene when the NYC Twin Towers fall, thus sealing his fate. (The sequel is inevitable.)

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