Samantha Hughes lives with her Uncle Emmett, a Vietnam Veteran in Hopewell, Kentucky. At her high school graduation, the speaker urges the class to consider the future, but Sam has some unfinished business with the past. She's desperate to learn more about the Vietnam War because her father, Dwayne, died there before she was born. Sam pumps Elliott for details about the war. But like the other vets in town, he isn't talking. Although her mother has remarried and moved to another city, Sam finds some letters to her from Dwayne written from Vietnam. And at a veteran's dance, she picks up more hints about the past. Then, after her grandmother produces Dwayne's diary, Sam camps out in a nearby swamp — the closest thing she can find to Vietnam — to read the diary privately. It reveals a different side of the war, the one filled with violence and inhumanity. When Emmett finds her the next morning, her reactions prompt him to finally share what the war did to him. In a deeply touching finale, Emmett, Sam, and her grandmother journey to Washington, D.C. to visit the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
In Country reveals how Sam acts as a catalyst to encourage her family to confront and release their long-buried grief, sorrow and pain about Vietnam. Bruce Willis and Emily Lloyd deliver very convincing performances as Emmett and Sam. Norman Jewison, director of the film, has stated: "I think there's a hole left in the heart of America, in people's hearts, that has to be healed. I hope this film and others like it can help heal that wound."