Robert Duvall plays Colonel “Bull” Meechum, an expert Marine fighter pilot and authoritative family man who drives his wife and kids perilously close to the edge. Unable to shed his military persona in peacetime, Meechum becomes “a warrior without a war” who can show love only through discipline. In an Oscar-nominated role reminiscent of his hard-boiled portrayal of Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore in Apocalypse Now, Duvall delivers a vivid, nuanced performance as a man intolerant of defiance at home but propelled by his own internal contradictions toward self-destruction.