Combat Shock

The film begins with stock footage scenes of warfare in Vietnam. A soldier named Frankie (Ricky Giovinazzo) is seen running alone through the jungle as his voice narrates. He explains that he "goes back there every night" right before he wakes up in bed with his wife in their squalid NYC apartment. The distorted cries of his baby are heard, and his very pregnant wife wakes up to tend to their six-month-old son. They argue over Frankie's unemployment and their son's health. The baby is a mutant. Frankie assumes it was a result of chemical weapons, such as Agent Ornage, used during the war.Frankie then goes out onto the urban jungle of the streets. He passes by a junkie who buys some drugs from the local kingpin, Paco. The junkie desperately searches for a needle to shoot up with.Frankie waits in line outside the unemployment office. But after a while, Frankie's social worker tells him that there is no work for him at the current time. Typical of the movie, unexplained arbitrary things happen, such as the social worker asking another if he's seen his Veg-O-Matic. Frankie's social worker spaces out during their meeting and says, "Life is hot, and because life is hot, I must take off my jacket." He then resumes the meeting, imploring Frankie to go back to school because he has no marketable skills. Frankie claims that he has no money or funds for college and is desperate for work, having been unemployed for four months.Back on the streets, Frankie kills time entertaining a child prostitute. But when he tells the prositute that he has no money, she tells him to go away. After Frankie leaves, Paco, the child prostitue's pimp, beats up the teenage girl for not making enough money.Meanwhile, the junkie resorts to dumping the drugs directly onto a wound he opens in his arm with a rusted coat hanger wire and passes out. A random woman comes upon him and steals his gun and ammunition, putting them in her purse.Frankie calls his father from a local payphone to ask for money. His father thinks the call is a prank, because he believes his son died in Saigon 15 years ago. Frankie explains that he was reported killed in action, but he made it out alive and spent three years in a U.S. Army hospital recuperating. Frankie tells his father that his wife is pregnant again and they are being evicted within a few days from their apartment, but his father says that he is also broke and about to die from cancer.Seemingly broken, Frankie comes across the same woman who stole the junkie's gun and steals her purse, an out of character criminal act for him. She screams for help. Paco and his thugs chase Frankie. When they overcome him, they mercilessly beat him up. The gun falls out of the bag during the pummeling. When Paco goes through the bag, he finds the bullets and realizes there must have been a gun in it. He turns around to see Frankie standing with the gun. Frankie shoots and kills all three men in a daze.With Frankie beaten to a pulp, his voice-over explains that his father was right: he had died in Saigon. He explains in another flashback to Vietnam that his company had come upon a village where everyone had killed themselves to avoid being raped and murdered by the US soldiers. Frankie went AWOL and spent days wondering aimlessly in the jungle. He realizes that he must similarly 'save' his family, and he returns home.That evening, Frankie returns home where his wife is horrified by his appearance and briefly tends to his wounds. He is catatonic and hallucinates in front of the TV. Eventually, he reloads the gun and prepares to kill himself, but another hallucination reminds him of his purpose for returning home. Frankie walks into the bedroom, tells his pregnant wife that he loves her, and then shoots her in the stomach. As she lies on the ground, he shoots her three more times, yelling at her to die. He shoots the deformed baby and then picks it up from the crib. He cradles it and walks into the kitchen with it. Frankie lays the baby in the oven, and turns it all the way to the cleaning setting. He then pours himself a glass of spoiled milk and drinks it before committing suicide by shooting himself in the head.

Question: How old is Frankie's son?
Answer: Six months