AMERICAN SOLITAIRE (Aaron Davidman 2025)

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AARON DAVIDMAN: AMERICAN SOLITAIRE (2025)

A meditation on the American obsession with guns

This film opens with a vignette of a man assembling a rifle as a boy watches quietly, with awe. It's a hushed ritual, well and memorably shot to be straightforward, yet luminous. A lot of other scenes of American Solitaire also have the feel of rituals. Rather than tell a story, this film tosses out a series of heavy subjects for us to contemplate, and massages them. It doesn't at all times quite work as a movie. But it impresses with its seriousness. It brings up subjects like PTSD and the struggle to deal with it, gun proliferation and gun violence, the cult of weaponry, and, of course, war. In an environment like this film's presentation at New York's Cinema Village, with nights for discussion with the filmmakers and the cast, or for gun violence prevention and safety, and for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, where the emphasis is coming together and discussing issues raised, this can be a valuable film because it brings up many of these subjects in an atmosphere that's thoughtful, not sensational.

The focus of American Solitaire is a wounded American Afghan war veteran, Slinger (Joshua Close), who returns to his hometown. Then, stuff happens. He's arranged to stay at the house of another veteran, Athena (Joanne Kelly), who was CST, Kandahar, "but it was the Rangers." Slinger was Special Forces. When he was wounded, Emmett (Jamir Vega) hears, he "died," and they brought him back. He saw stuff.

Emmett is the fourteen-year-old nephew of Slinger's buddy August, or Auggie (Gilbert Owuor), who is black. Slinger is white. His father Dominic, played by actor Cooper Huckabee, has been described as a "crusty old fella" said to represent "rugged individualism" and traditional masculinity that conflicts with Slinger's journey toward healing. I'd say he's a redneck bigot asshole, and a thoroughly hateful old man, part of the problem. He's also a chain smoker with diabetes who says all the wrong things to Slinger.

While Slinger is done with his service, when Auggie asks him if he'd go back, he answers, ambivalently, "No, but yes." But Slinger really is done. He has a huge wound on his leg, and walks with a cane, though not always. He can't go back. And a physical accident when he's trying to play ball with a kid shows how close to collapse he is. An excellent performance by Joshua Close manages to be intense without ever seeming showy. He projects a troubled yet controlled inwardness.

The topic of psychotherapy for the mental wounds of war arises. Slinger is changing through the brief trajectory of the film, initially against "shrinks," who he's told are called "therapists" now, then maybe not. Auggie is dead set against them, outraged at the idea. He has been commissioned as an officer and is now a major. An officer doesn't do therapy, he says - certainly not a black one. Slinger and Auggie go to a shooting range. Auggie shakes so much he can't hit the target. They are both angered by a couple of young men who behave irresponsibly with weapons.

A lot of American Solitaire revolves around firearms. Slinger knows them and possesses some good ones. There are constant flashbacks to his iconic rifle instruction by his father. He also tells Emmett about the first weapon he got in the service, an M-16, and how he learned to assemble and disassemble a rifle blindfolded. He visits a gun sales shop and admires a modern rifle that costs over three thousand dollars; and the salesman tries to sell him a pair of vintage pistols used in a film.

Everyone in this film is to some extent imploding. The worst example is Auggie, whose repression i destroys him. We learn we should not say someone "committed suicide" but "lost his life to suicide," because "suicide is not a crime." After what happens to Auggie, we see the spinoff of inner torment to his relatives. Perhaps worst affected is Emmett, and Slinger attempts to take Emmett in hand and help him.

American Solitaire avoids preaching - until it takes us to a church with Emmett and Slinger, where Rev. Clay
Dylan Kussman, who in fact does preach against violence and weapons and identifies the parts of the Bible that call for beating swords into plowshares (Matthew 26:52, . He also recitres some of the most impressive statistics about gun violence in America: 43,000 gun related deaths a year, 120 people a day, 22 US veteran suicides every day. Slinger and Emmett have gathered up and brought Slinger's and Auggie's collections of weapons to the church, where they participate in breaking them up and forging the the metal into, for one thing, a shovel whose wooden handle has the name,"August" on it.

In fact this movie stresses that names are "powerful," and explains the meanings of the names Athena ("truth," also "war")f, Alexander (Slinger's original name: "protector" or "defender") and Emmett ("truth" or "reliability" - but he was named after Emmett Till).

American Solitaire, 95 mins., premiered at Coronado Island, Nov. 7, 2025. It opens at Cinema Village, NYC Apr. 17, 2026.