David Duchovny is the latest actor said to be associated with the long-gestating Pararescueman drama “The Last Full Measure”. The film, which also has Andy Garcia, Robert Duvall, Laurence Fishburne and Morgan Freeman attached, reunites Duchovny with his “Phantom” writer/director Todd Robinson.

Robinson, speaking about the film’s lengthy delays in an interview with Zap2it, said Duchovny and another “Phantom” star William Fichtner have agreed to partake in the film.

Robinson says, despite the delays, “Last Full Measure” is expected to film in Georgia before the end of the year.

What appealed to Duchovny and co about coming aboard the film, the true story of an Air Force Pararescueman who saved 60 men before being killed in a bloody Vietnam battle, are the fleshed-out characters within it.

“I try to write three-dimensional characters [actors] would like to play, and write words they would like to say, and give them something to explore,” says Robinson. “I’d seen an awful lot of bad material, where all the emotion is written in to the lines. A lot of writing is oriented toward a result and that’s not what actors want to do. They want to push their process through the text, and find their performance. The white space in between the lines is as important to me as what’s actually in ink.”

It may sound like it, but the movie’s not so much about politics as it is about pals.

“It’s a story about friendship and loyalty and altruism,” he says. “So there’s really something in it for everybody. And it has a wonderful, heartbreaking, yet totally uplifting ending — it’s a celebration of life in the end.”

Robinson, who says his movie has “the heartbeat of this battle that’s driving the story through in a very ‘Rashomon’ kind of way… yet you have these wonderful intimate scenes between these great actors”, has had a hard slog getting the movie up because it isn’t some kind of flashy, special effects-riddled studio blockbuster.

“It is a little frustrating that there are less and less movies made, and they’re bigger and bigger, and there’s more pressure on those movies,” Robinson explains. “For people who love making movies, and seeing movies, I think you’re getting less and less of a variety because it really is a corporate mentality in terms of choosing material.”

The movie, which “Mission : Impossible – Ghost Protocol” financier David Ellison is spearheading monetarily, tells of Airman William H. Pitsenbarger, Jr. (“Pits”), who, 34-years after his death, is awarded the nations highest military honour for his actions on the battlefield.