The primary question with regards to Tin Soldier (now streaming on Hulu) isn’t “Why have I never heard of this movie starring Jamie Foxx, Robert De Niro and Scott Eastwood?”, but rather, “What the living crap is that on Foxx’s head?” His bizarre football-shaped afro looks like the product of a costume designer with a nasty grudge. But it works, only because the wig fits quite nicely within the general WTFness of the movie as a whole, which was directed by Brad Furman (The Lincoln Lawyer), shot in 2022, finally released in ’25 – presumably after a grueling editing process – and then dumped on streaming platforms, where it’s destined to fade into oblivion. Deservingly so, I might add.
The Gist: Nash Cavanaugh (Eastwood) is more flashback than man now. You think I’m being a wiseass, because Tin Soldier is laden with enough gauzy reminiscences to bewilder most denizens of this mortal plane. But it’s also kind of true – Nash is a PTSD-stricken military veteran who just can’t manage his trauma, and reminds us of this truth in voiceover narration that’s more persistent than a swarm of stinging gnats. “My past is not letting go of me,” he grumbles. “Where there was once a warrior is only a husk of a soldier with unseen wounds,” is his self-assessment. Harsh! He has the Lifestyle of a Damaged Man to show for it: Lives in a middle-of-nowhere shack, sleeps on a beat-up couch, shuffles forlornly to the bar so he can sit alone and drink, wears hair and a beard from the Nigh-Homeless Veteran costume he bought at Spirit Halloween.
How did Nash get to this point? “I lost my wife in an accident that I caused,” he gravel-groans into our ears. We learn (in flashbacks and via voiceover, of course) that he once belonged to The Program, an inpatient home for, yes, PTSD-stricken military veterans who just can’t manage their trauma. It was founded by Leon K. Prudhomme, a.k.a. “The Bokushi” (Foxx), who turned the org into a heavily armed cult who initially admired his Jules Winnfield jheri curls but are now in thrall to his batshit monstrosity of a coiffure – and who presumably dubbed himself The Bokushi because Leon K. Prudhomme just wasn’t quite insane enough. While in The Program, Nash met, fell in love with and married Evoli Carmichael (Nora Arnezender), but The Bokushi didn’t approve of their relationship so they tried to escape and goons chased them and their truck veered off the road and plunged into the river and she died.
OR DID SHE. It’s all a haze to Nash, a feeling we feel along with him, since the aforementioned flashbacked story is cut into about 200 pieces and dispersed throughout the movie. And now the latest of a long string of oy-vey Movie Names, Emmanuel Ashburn (De Niro), wants to recruit Nash for an infiltration of The Program, dangling a carrot in front of our desperately shave-and-a-haircut-needing protag: Evoli might not be kaputskies. It takes a little persuading; maybe Ashburn should’ve thrown in a shave and haircut, on the Pentagon’s dime. But if he hadn’t, we wouldn’t get Nash’s grim shave-and-haircut mug-in-the-mirror scene, a cliche that the movie absolutely needs, because how else would we know that Nash is a somber, serious man, a point that was only ground to dust in the first 15 minutes? Some things just need to be underscored one, maybe two million times.
Now, this isn’t some The Departed-type undercover gig. No, it’s a Waco-style smasheroo, likely ill-advised but theoretically more exciting for a movie that wants to be an action movie because it doesn’t have the patience to be a deep-cover movie. That crew is led by Luke Dunn, a character I mention only because he’s played by John Leguizamo, which further illustrates how many people in this movie are getting paid. And so here goes the Humvee, barreling straight at the gates of the compound, bazooka shells flying, but not before The Bokushi performs a rippin’ R&B number, complete with walk-on-water FX, for his followers, dubbed Shinja, who he promises to lead to a utopia called Euterria, a word that comes complete with its own Foxx-orated etymology. And here’s where I apologize for making this movie sound more engaging than it truly is. But I’ve gotta keep myself awake somehow.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Crazy to think that De Niro has been a part-time rent-a-star in low-budget crime and horror movies for a couple of decades now. Godsend was an early one, 2004; see also: Heist, Killing Season, Hide and Seek, Freelancers. Or better yet, don’t see-also them.
Performance Worth Watching: Whoever came up with the Movie Names. A few more loony ones: Lawrence Kollock, Kivon Jackson, Sleve McDichael, Todd Bonzalez and Mike Truck. (OK, some of those aren’t from the movie, but I bet you can’t tell which!)
Our Take: The good news: Tin Soldier is unintentionally hilarious dreck. The bad news: It looks like shit, probably because they blew the budget on wig adhesive. More egregious is the editing, which must’ve been a job comparable to rebuilding Nagasaki. Hats off to the editor (name withheld to protect the innocent), who turned a crater full of ash into something just outside the ballpark of watchable. Apparently, Furman’s idea of “coverage” was to turn in a Rubbermaid storage tub full of footage that looks like the Ginsu knife guy chopped it into microscopic bits that quickly coalesced into a fine beige paste.
Flashbacks, voiceover that begs us to compare it to Apocalypse Now, artsy slo-mo and ethereal visions-slash-hallucinations function as watery glue holding together the story, which shouldn’t be so difficult to execute. I mean, it’s a forlorn love story encircled within a fortress of quasi-revenge cliches that prevent us from feeling a single damn emotion. Besides ennui, that is. It’s rather remarkable, really, that Foxx’s ludicrous, ego-stroking song-and-dance routine hits like soggy flatulence because Furman doesn’t know what to do with it besides drop it in there to fill time and embarrass all involved parties.
All this junk is filler in a movie that wants to be a full-hog action extravaganza, but is clearly limited by its budget, so its shootouts and whatnot are confusional, CGI-addled rubbish. Take one mano-a-mano fight sequence set in a stairwell: Sirens blare and strobes flash and the shaky-cam thrashes like a salmon in a grizzly bear’s mouth – and is that gasoline spraying out of the sprinkler system? Egads. Two Tylenol, please. Make it three. I’m honestly impressed with how half-assed Tin Soldier is in every aspect of its construction and execution. You’d think something featuring Robert De Niro, Jamie Foxx and Scott Eastwood would be a got damn bona-fide movie, but you’d be wrong.
Our Call: Tin Soldier yearns to be a badass weave, but it’s just a mangy merkin. SKIP IT.
John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog hugged him once.
