The Dry Land is parched Iraq and writer-director Ryan Piers Williams’ west Texas home ground, though that title also points to a Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder state of mind. Its story ends in rare renewing rain, at the very last second rescuing threatened disaster with “hope, there is hope for a life after the war.”

Fiction films have long dealt with the anxieties of emotional and physical reentry into civilian existence. The Big Parade, The Best Years of Our Lives, The Men and Coming Home are but excellent examples covering four of our wars, with this low-budgeter treating a fifth at a time when “shell shock”/”battle fatigue” has been more extensively studied as well as linked to other, non-combat survival situations.

During four years of poring over true cases of demobbed GIs, Williams noted that there is insufficient counseling offered them, aside from “to some degree it is Prozac.” To ensure authenticity, the crew requested and received cooperation from the Army, DOD and National Guard; and to avoid starpower swallowing the bare-nerve emotion of the tale, a relative unknown was cast as lead despite financing difficulties that might result.

So, Everyman-faced mostly television and stage actor Ryan O’Nan is James Scott, a bit lost on deplaning in El Paso to be engulfed with love by lonely wife Sara (America Ferrara, also co-executive producer), “don’t ever leave me again.” Waving hand flags, family and friends gather at the couple’s mobile home in welcome, with the hero touchy about his deployment and remembering nothing about having killed or about the deadly ambush of his group’s Humvee. He slips money to ill, chain-smoking mother Martha (Melissa Leo), who remembers his late father’s descent into blue meanies and alcohol following service in Nam. He accepts a job he once turned down at dubious father-in-law David Valdez’ (Benito Martínez) slaughterhouse, where coworkers’ curiosity and bovine blood and guts kindle unsettling repressed memories.

SPOILER ALERT

On their way over, troops had drunk it up in Germany, where their sergeant’s girl turned out to be a “dude,” but James now avoids alcohol until coaxed into a late-nighter by fellow workers, best friend Michael (Jason Ritter) and obscenely insinuating Joe Davis (Evan Jones). A fight with the latter leaves him bloodied and unconscious, brought home and dumped into bed. He has been sleepwalking through sex with Sara and choked her in nightmare frenzy, but this latest is the last straw, as she moves out and back in with her folks and, in helping her, Michael becomes now and later the object of jealousy.

These wild mood swings prompt the ex-soldier to seek help at the William Beaumont Army Medical Center, but, although he takes the pills prescribed there, a subsequent appointment with “a good doc” is forgotten by him or the film.

To recall what happened out there in combat, he visits the unit’s other whole-body survivor, Raymond González (Wilmer Valderrama), and over the objections of that comrade-in-arm’s wife Adriana (Ana Claudia Talancón) convinces him to accompany him in the red pickup. Two thousand miles and two motel hookers later, they walk into Walter Reed Army Hospital to visit third living member Henry (Diego Klattenhoff). The incontinent double amputee fills in the memory gaps and begs that, once having saved his life, James now help to end it.

Back in Texas, James’s frenzied ups-and-downs grow worse, exacerbated by family death, drinking, pills and jealousy. He thinks to follow the path the legless patient sought, but despite appearances something -- perhaps love -- forestalls him. True to its stated mission, this three-location-shoot Sundance indie furnishes two Web sites for PTSD “help is available for you, or someone you know,”

Grainy in places, home movie-like and including a brief picker-upper family DVD, thoughtful The Dry Land is appropriately slow low-key, in keeping with the war hero’s bewildered face even in stress or violence. Pained and sympathetic, he reflects the confusion felt by many of our ex-combatants. 

(Released by Freestyle Releasing and rated "R" for pervasive language, sexual content and disturbing violent situations.)