Sincerity and restraint can be good things in independent movies, but not when you run the risk of putting the audience to sleep like Liza Johnson’s overly understated drama about a returning Middle East veteran.
Linda Cardellini is not bad at all as Kelli, an Army reservist who experiences profound dislocation — for reasons she can’t put into words — when she’s reunited with her husband Mike (Michael Shannon, cast against type in a non-flamboyant role), their two daughters and a monotonous job in a ventilator factory in a small Ohio town.
Mike takes off with the kids when Kelli quits her job, seriously begins hitting the bottle and neglects her daughters. But Johnson denies her star any satisfyingly big dramatic scenes, even during a confrontation with the woman she discovers has been sleeping with her husband.
“Return’’ comes briefly to life when John Slattery of “Mad Men’’ turns up as an acerbic yet sympathetic reclusive drunk whom Kelli meets during court-mandated rehab. But it’s not enough for a film that limps along to a pretty much preordained climax.