Thirty-two years after he limped into movie history as Lieutenant Dan Taylor, Gary Sinise is telling the rest of the story — and he picked the perfect week to do it.

The Ballad of Lieutenant Dan, a new documentary about Sinise’s life and his decades of work for America’s veterans, is out today on digital HD, DVD, cable and satellite platforms across North America, distributor Freestyle Digital Media announced. It lands on the eve of Veterans Day — and in Toledo, where free Veterans Day meals and tributes are already lined up for tomorrow, the timing could not be better.

The film starts where most of us met Sinise: Forrest Gump. But the role that made him famous turned out to be the beginning of a calling, not the peak of a career. Directed by Steve Mitchell Beebe and produced by Bud Brutsman, the documentary traces how playing a wounded Vietnam veteran reshaped Sinise’s life — into a decades-long mission honoring America’s defenders, supporting injured veterans, and standing beside Gold Star families through his Gary Sinise Foundation.

The interviews alone are worth the watch: Tim Allen, Jay Leno, Joe Mantegna, Chip Foose and Mykelti Williamson — Sinise’s Forrest Gump co-star, who played Bubba — all sit down to talk about the man behind the mission.

It is not all salutes and standing ovations. The film also turns to the hardest chapter of Sinise’s life: the death of his beloved son, Mac. The documentary moves between that private grief and his very public purpose, held together by the belief Sinise repeats throughout — “We can always do a little more.”

For a generation that grew up quoting Forrest Gump, this is the rare nostalgia play that actually means something. Lieutenant Dan was fiction. The work Sinise did after the cameras stopped rolling was not.

The Ballad of Lieutenant Dan is available now on North American digital HD internet, DVD, cable and satellite platforms. Watch it tonight, then thank a veteran tomorrow — Toledo has plenty of ways to do both.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Sources: EIN Presswire / Freestyle Digital Media · Freestyle Digital Media