Best movies like Distant Thunder
A hero of war. A casualty of peace, With only one hope for survival...his son.
A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Distant Thunder Starring Ralph Macchio, John Lithgow, Kerrie Keane, Reb Brown, and more. If you liked Distant Thunder then you may also like: The War at Home, Welcome Home, One Christmas, Our Sons, Jacknife and many more popular movies featured on this list. You can further filter the list even more or get a random selection from the list of similar movies, to make your selection even easier.
A troubled Vietnam war vet deserts his wife and child shortly after he returns from the war. He returns after 10 years, where he's been living like an animal in the forest. He finds himself unprepared for the changes that he will have to cope with, and when the vet tries to contact his son, he realizes that he has caused more damage than he had imagined.
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Welcome Home
An Air Force officer returns to his father, son and remarried wife in Vermont after 17 years in Vietnam.
One Christmas
Based on Truman Capote's bittersweet tale of a young boy's adventures with the father he's never known in New Orleans in the 1930s..
Our Sons
When James admits to his mother that he is gay it strains her liberal attitude. A San Diego businesswoman, Audrey believes she is a modern, open-minded mother, but the news sends her reeling. However, the real shock comes when James asks her to travel to Arkansas and inform his lover's estranged mom, Luanne, that her son has AIDS. As Audrey and Luanne learn to put aside their prejudice toward each other, they soon discover how to share their thoughts, hopes and fears for their sons.
Journey From the Fall
Thirteen years after the end of the Vietnam War, a family who was tragically affected by the war are forced to emigrate to America.
Life as a House
When a man is diagnosed with terminal cancer, he takes custody of his misanthropic teenage son, for whom quality time means getting high, engaging in small-time prostitution, and avoiding his father.
Some Kind of Hero
A Vietnam vet returns home from a prisoner of war camp and is greeted as a hero, but is quickly forgotten and soon discovers how tough survival is in his own country.
In the Gloaming
Danny, dying of AIDS, returns home for his last months. Always close to his mother, they share moments of openness that tend to shut out Danny's father and his sister.
Missing in America
A haunted Vietnam veteran, living in exile in the forests of the Pacific Northwest, is faced with a life-changing decision after he is visited by a former platoon member and his young Amerasian daughter.
Always Outnumbered
An ex-con moves to L.A. to find work and creates a disturbance by fighting for a position. More importantly he touches the lives of many of his neighbors including an older man dying of cancer, a young married couple whose husband is too proud to accept a lesser position which causes strife with his wife, and a young boy on the verge of getting in trouble with street gangs.
Table for Five
J.P. Tannen (Jon Voight) wants a second chance to be a father to his children ... but someone else has taken his place. Determined not to just be a friendly 'uncle' in their lives, he gets permission from his ex-wife Kathleen (Millie Perkins) and her new husband (Richard Crenna) to take the kids on a Mediterranean cruise. On the journey he comes to realise it's not that easy and, feeling overwhelmed, begins to doubt his abilities until a tragedy back home forces him to become the father he always hoped to be.
Pontiac Moon
An absent-minded-professor father and his son take off in an old Pontiac to bond during a symbolic road trip through the Western U.S. This while his wife tries to overcome her neuroses to save the family.
Everything Is Fine
Josh is an ordinary teen living in an ordinary suburb. One morning he finds his friend's dead body. Next, he discovers that three more friends also have killed themselves, leaving him out of their pact. As the sole survivor, Josh becomes more and more detached from the world around him. It is a modern portrait of today's teens: invincible yet fragile, clear-thinking yet confused...
Blame It on the Night
When his unmarried mother dies, custody of 13-year-old Job is assumed by his alleged father, Chris, whom he has never seen. Job is an enthusiastic cadet at a military academy, and Chris turns out to be a top-grossing rock star who removes Job from his beloved school to keep him company on tour. Getting acquainted is fraught with culture shock for both father and son. Written by Paul Emmons
The Autumn Heart
When a school bus driving woman (Tyne Daly) has a heart attack, she makes one request of her three daughters (Ally Sheedy, Marla Sucharetza, Marceline Hugo) - she wants them to find their long lost brother, who was taken away by their father (Jack Davidson) 16 years ago. What they discover is that while they have struggled, their father has become a wealthy man and their brother is in school at Harvard.
Handsome Harry
An ex-Navy man carrying out the last wish of a dying shipmate renews contact with old friends to break the code of silence around a mysterious, long-buried crime.
Rails & Ties
A deadly collision between a train and car lead to an unlikely bond between the train engineer and a young boy who escapes the carnage.
The Dry Land
A U.S. soldier returning home from war struggles to reconcile his experiences abroad with the life and family he left in Texas.
A Long Way Home
Family members struggle to heal their emotional wounds after an incident of sexual abuse.
A Christmas Visitor
The Boyajian family learned of 18-year-old John's death in the Persian Gulf War on Christmas Eve eleven years earlier and have not celebrated Christmas since. They have been so consumed by his death that they have forgotten the joys of the holidays, until a mysterious visitor enters their lives and rekindles the spirit of the season.
Crossed Over
After her son dies in a hit-and-run accident, a woman forms an unusual friendship with a convicted killer awaiting execution.
Beyond the Call
Russell Gates (David Strahairn) is a Vietnam vet on death row for killing a policeman. His childhood sweetheart, Pam O'Brien (Sissy Spacek), is stunned to learn this and does not believe he could commit such a crime. She writes to him much to the dismay of her husband Keith and becomes obsessed with the case, exploring every avenue that may still be open to the doomed man. The trips to the prison take a toll on both her marriage and her family.
Sister, Sister
Heated confrontations and revelations result when a divorcee returns with her young son to the home of her two sisters.
Tiger Warsaw
Chuck brought sorrow to his family when he shot his father who is now a semi-invalid. After 15 years of self destruction, he returns home to seek forgiveness.
Green Dragon
A tale about Vietnamese refugees sent to an orientation camp on the Camp Pendleton Marine Base in California, 'Green Dragon' focuses on a young boy and his sister. Set in 1975, the film chronicles the stories told to the two children by other refugees in the camp and of Tai Tran, who dares to introduce himself to Sergeant Jim Lance. In developing a relationship with Lance, Tran is able to improve
Resting Place
A television movie set in Rockville, Georgia, in 1972. Major Kendall Laird, a Survival Assistance Officer, arrives in this sleepy little town with the body of Lieutenant Dwyte Johnson, a Vietnam war hero. It's Laird's job to help Johnson's parents bury their son. But since the dead hero was black, his parents are turned away by the white racists who maintain the town's "all-white" cemetery.
The Wedding Chapel
Uninspired and newly single painter Sara is down on her luck and wants nothing more than to get away from her problems. When she decides to take a trip to visit her mom, she becomes involved in the efforts to save a local church which is in danger of closing down.
Paper Covers Rock
Samantha is recovering from a suicide attempt and ready for a fresh start in life. She has to fight for the custody of her daughter.
A Soldier's Love Story
Ten year old Jared Marshall's life crumbled down after his parents' divorce a year ago. Not only does his dad put his job first since, mother uproots him from Iowa by moving in with her ma so she can take a job in California. When Jared's class writes letters to US troops in Bosnia from the nearest base, kindhearted Sergeant First Class Vince Carerra, who grew up fatherless and got divorced because his wife wasn't faithful while he was on tour of duty, takes to the kid and starts a correspondence with 'fatherly' advice. Once his unit returns to Fort Sebastian, Vince calls on Jared's home, warmly welcomed. Vince becomes Jared's personal baseball coach and after some Cupid encouragement, his mother's boyfriend, but on an understanding not to commit because he's likely to be redeployed.
Going Back
A group of Marines return to Vietnam with a news crew to relive their tragic war experiences.
For the Love of a Child
1959, support from US troops based in Asia and later from the Sates enables two actresses to start a charity for mixed-race 'orphans' who are locally neglected as outcasts. Thus originates Childhelp, which later runs multi-disciplinary centers for abused and/or neglected children in the States. Among them is bright Jacob Fletcher, whose stepfather, a lawyer, terrorized him into utter trauma and reclaims him shortly after 10 months in jail. Jacob's peers have distressing stories of their own, but competent, devoted staff helps most of them decisively on the former farm, using animal therapy.
The War at Home
Jeremy Collier is a Vietnam veteran who has returned home and is struggling to cope with the war experiences that haunt him. He is also at odds with his family, who cannot begin to understand what he has been through. Jeremy's battles with his family finally spiral out of control on Thanksgiving Day, when a bitter secret is revealed