After a harrowing 15-month combat experience in Iraq, the much-decorated Adam Schumann (Miles Teller) returns home to Kansas and a loving wife, Saskia (Haley Bennett). Adam and Saskia have two young children, a daughter and infant son born while Adam was still overseas.
Adam suffers from PTSD as manifest by nightmares and frequent flashbacks for which his wife convinces him to seek help from an overburdened Department of Veterans Affairs. He also receives solace from two Iraq buddies living nearby, an American Samoan, Solo Aeiti (Beulah Koale), and Billy Waller (Joe Cole), who commits suicide in front of his fiancée (Erin Darke) after discovering she has taken all his money and their child and left him.
Adam’s unresolved psychological issues revolve around his failure to safely rescue a fellow soldier from a building under fire, Michael Emory (Scott Haze), who was dropped on his head and rendered hemiplegic but later expresses gratitude to Adam for being alive, and survivor’s guilt about letting Sergeant First Class James Doster (Brad Beyer) take Adam’s place on patrol one day.
When the Humvee with Doster filling in for Adam makes a wrong turn and hits an improvised explosive device, Solo assists the men in their escape to safety, but Doster is inadvertently left behind and dies in the conflagration. Doster’s grieving widow, Amanda (Amy Schumer), who is best of friends with Saskia Schumann, finally gains closure as she learns the circumstances of her husband’s death towards the end of the movie and absolves Adam and Solo of responsibility for it.
Thank You for Your Service is a 2017 American biographical war drama film written and directed by Jason Hall, in his directorial debut, based on the 2013 non-fiction book of the same name by David Finkel. Finkel, a Washington Post reporter, wrote about veterans of the 2nd Battalion, 16th Infantry Regiment returning to the vicinity of Fort Riley, Kansas, following a 15-month deployment in Iraq in 2007.
The film is about posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depicting U.S. soldiers who try to adjust to civilian life, and stars Miles Teller, Haley Bennett, Beulah Koale, Amy Schumer and Scott Haze. Principal photography on the film began on February 9, 2016, in Atlanta, Georgia. In March 2016, it filmed at the Gwinnett Place Mall in Duluth, Georgia.
The film had its world premiere at the Heartland Film Festival on October 15, 2017, and was released in the United States on October 27, 2017, by Universal Pictures. It received generally positive reviews from critics, with praise aimed at the cast, but grossed just $9 million against its $20 million budget.
In the United States and Canada, Thank You for Your Service was released alongside Jigsaw and Suburbicon, and was projected to gross around $5 million from 2,054 theaters in its opening weekend. It ended up debuting to just $3.7 million, finishing 6th at the box office, and marking the second straight week Teller was featured in a well-received but underperforming biopic, following Only the Brave. In its second weekend it made $2.3 million, dropping 40%, finishing 7th at the box office.
Thank You for Your Service (2017)
Directed by: Jason Hall
Starring: Miles Teller, Haley Bennett, Joe Cole, Amy Schumer, Beulah Koale, Scott Haze, Keisha Castle-Hughes, Brad Beyer, Kerry Cahill, Stella Pileggi, David Morse, Adam Schumann, Tony Winters
Screenplay by: Jason Hall
Production Design by: Keith P. Cunningham, John P. Goldsmith
Cinematography by: Roman Vasyanov
Film Editing by: Jay Cassidy, Dino Jonsäter
Costume Design by: Hope Hanafin
Set Decoration by: Karen O’Hara, Monica Sallustio
Art Direction by: Erik Polczwartek, Aziz Rafiq, Marco Trentini
Music by: Thomas Newman
MPAA Rating: R for strong violent content, language throughout, some sexuality, drug material and brief nudity.
Distributed by: Universal Pictures
Release Date: October 27, 2017
