Living Life...Boomer Style

When three very different U.S. soldiers find themselves on an unplanned road trip across America, they form a deep bond that may be the closest thing any of them has to real family.

T.K. Poole (Michael Peña), Colee Dunn (Rachel McAdams) and Fred Cheever (Tim Robbins) arrive in New York from Germany only to find their connecting flights canceled due toa power outage. Anxious to get to their respective destinations, they agree to share a rented minivan to suburban St. Louis where Cheever is to reunite with his wife and teenage son. From there, the other two plan to fly to Las Vegas where the macho T.K. wants to make an importantstop before seeing his fiancée and the tough, yet naïve, Colee plans to pay a visit to a fallen fellow-soldier’s family.

Homecoming

But when Cheever’s homecoming turns out to be a far cry from what he anticipated, the trio’s one-day drive expands into an impromptu cross-country marathon. Along the way, they

experience a string of surprising adventures ranging from the hilarious to the heartbreaking. As their interstate journey takes them from a barroom brawl to a high society dance to a bizarre Sunday morning church service, T.K., Colee and Cheever discover that home is not quite what they remembered and the unlikely companionship they’ve found in one another might be what matters most of all.

Production Fun

The camaraderie among the actors and crew was real and strengthened by their shared experiences of filming on the road far from their homes and star trailers. They stayed in the same hotels and motels, ate together and spent more time with each other than would have been the case if this had been a movie filmed in studios. At one point a major tornado warning shut down filming at a Chicago-area church. Hundreds of extras were standing around with nothing to do when the actors began an impromptu musical session.

“Everybody was getting tired,” Peña says, “and we just wanted to jam out, so I started playing the drums and Tim hopped on with the guitar and people started singing along. It was really really cool.”