REVIEW: 'Lifted' — The Anti-War Movie for Everyone

In my role as Executive Director of Ride 2 Recovery, a mental and physical rehabilitation program for injured veterans that makes a difference in the lives of those who come thru our program (more info: Ride2Recovery.com), I am asked to preview movies, music, and all things military and, or veteran related entertainment. Since we deal with a lot of PTSD patients, the scars of war are all to familiar and the haunting that they feel and the effects it takes on their families is hard to explain to those who do not know these brave men and women or experienced war and its related hardships themselves.

So it was last Thursday that I, along with a few other military organizations came to meet for a viewing of the upcoming movie “Lifted.” Because the director was a noted Hollywood liberal, I was not really sure what I was about to see.

In this ever polarized environment we live in today, it is rare to find a movie about the War on Terror that takes both a decided anti-war theme, but yet gives supporters of the conflict a chance to feel pride in the way a boy and his family overcome the struggles of deployment.

Such a movie will hopefully be in a multiplex near you very soon. That movie is “Lifted.”

Written and directed by Academy Award-nominated director Lexi Alexander, “Lifted” stars talented twelve-year-old Uriah Shelton in his movie debut. The movie takes place and was filmed on location in rural Alabama.

The plot revolves around Henry Matthews, played by Shelton, as an exceptionally talented young R& B singer, whose happy family life is disrupted when his father, a Marine, is re-deployed to Afghanistan and, despite all the obstacles including losing the family home and being forced to move in with his grandfather who hates his music, is inspired to enter a teen singing competition in the hopes of winning and escaping a world that is falling apart.

Uriah Shelton

As you watch the movie unfold, you look at it in two ways: first is the technical side in which Alexander shoots the timeline of the fathers deployment, his mothers struggles with drug addiction, and the torment of Henry as an outcast in school and at home, and second the story itself and the overall feeling one takes away at the end of the movie with a plot twist that leaves you raw with emotion.

The movie is centered in the relationship between father and son and the music they create together. The father, played by Dash Mihok (“The Good Wife”), provides the freestyle routines that help give the movie its soul.

Others appearing in the movie include; Todd Simpson, former American Idol winner Ruben Studdard, country singer Trace Adkins and former MTV DJ Alan Hunter as himself.

Dash Mihok

At the end, one is left with a family struggling with drug addiction, unemployment, losing their family home, a boy’s dream, and the father’s deployment overseas. While you can say that there are a few issues with certain points in the way the plot unfolds (a scene with Studdard and the mother looking for Henry comes to mind), you are ultimately left with an emotional experience of a boy and his father and the bond they share.

In all my time dealing with wounded troops and the issues of deployment, the strain on the family, the overcoming of obstacles, and the idea that hope exists, this film does the best job of trying to capture all of it in 90 minutes and I hope you will soon be LIFTED….