Lidia Joanne Simmons recalls her family's tough times in Juliette, Mississippi. Her shell-shocked Vietnam-vet father Stephen Simmons (Kevin Costner) is struggling to keep any job while her mother Lois (Mare Winningham) keeps the family together. Lidia and her twin brother Stu (Elijah Wood) make peace between the girls and boys to build a tree house together. They are always bullied by the junkyard Lipnicki kids. Stephen befriends Moe Henry who helps him get a job in the mine.

There is a lot of mannered southern accents especially from the kids. LaToya Chisholm is the broadest character of them all and it's somewhat bothersome. She plays the sassy black friend to its tilt. The kids have varying success and that's the problem. The movie relies on mostly amateur child actors and not all of them work well. Kevin Costner gives his wise lessons that border on preaching. This is dripping in sincerity and suffers from its heavy-handedness. The combination of Vietnam war action with a kids' coming-of-age fable creates an uneasy mix. If one's willing to buy into it, the film could be a sincere watch.

During one summer in the late 1960's, a treehouse in rural Mississippi becomes the symbolic heart behind a tug-of-war between a freshly-scrubbed group of school-kids and a bunch of bullying, junkyard teenagers. Predictable and somewhat overreaching family-oriented drama shoehorns in Kevin Costner as the father of two of the central good kids; he's just back from Vietnam and still hears the choppers, but we know he's in big trouble once he puts everything on the line to take a dangerous mining job. Mare Winningham plays his wife, who frets over every penny but tells her daughter not to badmouth her dad (the man has dreams, after all). There are lots of heart-to-heart chats, a visit to an old ramshackle house that might one day belong to the family, and a battle for that fort in the tree which never quite leads anywhere. Mostly, this is a noble, decent picture with precious few surprises, the exception being director Jon Avnet's decision to prolong the scenes of bullying, with the deep-seated anger eventually spilling over to the adults. It's like an episode of "The Waltons" crossed with "Stand By Me". *1/2 from ****

The War is a low-key period and mood piece, with some depth. It gives Kevin Costner something useful to do with his propensity to take himself seriously (often too seriously),but the film belongs to the young Elijah Wood.

Stu (Wood) and Lidia (Lexi Randall) are the children of Stephen (Costner) and Lois (Mare Winningham) Simmons. They are a poor family, aspiring to better themselves, but their ambitions have been obstructed by the baggage Stephen has brought back from Vietnam. The two children take themselves off to build a treehouse. In the course of this, they end up in conflict with the poor white trash Lipnicki children from the neighbouring scrapyard.

This slight premise actually generates a story which is gripping, constantly holds the attention, and which draws parallels between the war Stephen has returned from, the war which develops between the Simmonds and Lipnicki children, and which subtly poses the question of what is worth fighting for.

All the actors here give wonderful performances, without exception, but the children are particularly good across the board. And, having said that, it is not unfair to single out Elijah Wood. At the age of 13, he does not show the promise which led to later high profile roles: rather, that promise is already fully realised here. He is magnificent.