Rating: 3.5/5 
The film has probably gotten the most attention for the simple swap of expected genders in the leading role. Instead of some strapping, glowering powerhouse such as Jeremy Renner, Return casts Linda Cardellini as Kelly, a National Guard member returning home from deployment in the war zone overseas. The opening image of her long brown hair pulled into a demure bun above the collar of her camouflage fatigues is enough to establish that the film is trying to find its way to a different story. More crucially, Kelly isn’t reeling from some pronounced trauma, the sort of thing that lends itself to a weeping confession in an overwrought scene. She mostly served in the comparative safety of the resupply chain at the base hospital. When pressed about the experience, she typically dismisses her own troubles by saying, “A lot of people had it a lot worse.”
Even though she can’t pinpoint a single awful, transformative incident, Kelly still finds it unbearably daunting to reacquaint herself to her old life. On her first night back, she looks at her two young daughters tucked in their beds and wears an expression that suggests she doesn’t quite know what to make of them any more and that the sensation of distance troubles her deeply. Matters are even worse with her husband Mike (Michael Shannon); there’s a pronounced awkwardness to their time together, a sense that Kelly has simply forgotten who they once were and how they fit together. She finds her old job pointless and her friends tiresome. She doesn’t long for a return to the war – far from it, in fact, as later scenes make abundantly clear – but the experience of it has left her entirely adrift back at home. The most fascinating and welcome aspect of Return is its assertion that the damage of war isn’t inflicted solely on those charged with pulling triggers or living under direct fire. The totality of the experience, even in the safest corners, is enough to leave a soul entirely worn out.
Johnson opts for a highly plainspoken tone to the film. It may occasionally seem slow, but that’s a major part of what gives the film its observational authority. The dialogue in her screenplay tends towards mundane exchanges rather than big, bold speeches or wrenching monologues. The film is about people struggling through challenges they can’t quite explain, after all. The visuals are in proper symbiosis with the words, quietly observing as Kelly moves through the dying Ohio city she’s come back to, walking past abandoned industrial buildings and boarded-up retail outlets. Johnson isn’t trying to impose poetry on these images, nor emphasize the sadness. Like Kelly’s experience, this increasing social decrepitude merely is what it is. And it’s still worth remembering that a lot of people still have it a lot worse.
The relative leanness of Johnson’s approach gives the film room to be a true showcase for the actors. It’s a pleasure to see Shannon play the least haunted character onscreen for a change, and John Slattery has a nice if brief turn as an older troubled vet with whom Kelly forms a connection. The film belongs to Cardellini, though, and she delivers with a performance of tremendous thoughtfulness that shows the great, underused power in restraint. Cardellini has an incredibly expressive face, allowing the deepest truths of the character to come through in everything that isn’t said, those choices that she opts not to make. The character she plays may be somewhat lost, but Cardellini proves that, more so that at any other point in her career, she’s in complete control.
