In theaters. Rated R, 121 minutes. Trailer. 
Written and Directed by Paul Haggis (Crash), In the Valley of Elah tells the story of a man's search for the truth about his son's death. Tommy Lee Jones is Hank Deerfield, a crotchety ex-Marine of few words but intense emotions who doesn't suffer fools gladly (see, um, The Fugitive, Lonesome Dove, and Men in Black for the exact same character). He gets a call that his youngest son (a soldier) is missing from his Army base, just a couple of days after he returned from Iraq. He gets in his old Ford pickup, kisses an overacting Susan Sarandon, and heads to the base to track down his son (stopping on the way out to correct the flying of an American flag upside down, telling the culprit - "that is a sign of distress and a loss of hope."
He goes about all kinds of generic investigatory scenes with a brown haired Charlize Theron as the "tougher and smarter than she looks" single mom investigator. Ultimately it is determined that his son was killed, and he figures out who did it in spite of the bad police work of the Army and local police (I won't spoil the ending). There are some good scenes in the film, notably when Sarandon identifies the remains and any scene with Josh Brolin or Jason Patric, both in solid roles.
Up until the last 5 minutes, this was a B or B+, but the last song and severely 
Junior High emblematic use of the flag was an F, so it got pushed down to a B-. I saw the movie with Priest, who, as he should I suppose, let our group in on the secret that the Valley of Elah is where David and Goliath fought. That story gets told twice in the film, and coupled with the title obviously is supposed to mean something, but nobody could figure out what. The 'point' of the film was that war is hell and it takes a psychological toll on the kids we send to war and their families. Priest pointed out and I agreed that that theme is not exactly new or unknown to anyone, so the movie really served no purpose. Jones is good, but if he gets nominated, I hope it is for No Country For Old Men.
Saturday, October 6, 2007
In the Valley of Elah - B-
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2 comments:
This is a B- for me as well. Charlize Theron's storyline of a female detective derided by her male counterparts seemed stale and was out of place with the rest of the film. I'm sure some sexism takes place, but there is too much time spent on this issue when it has nothing to do with the actual point of the film. Tommy Lee Jones does an excellent job in a character he can now play in his sleep. Unlike lawyer, I thought Susan Sarandon was great as his wife. I don't know how you can overact a mother's anguish when she loses her only remaining son.
My biggest problem with this film is the same problem I had with Haggis' Crash (B). He way oversimplifies complex issues. With crash, the diversity of the stories and everyone's excitement to fill bad about racism hid the problem, but in this stark drama, there's nowhere for him to hide. We all get it that war is hell and screws men up. Hemingway examined that 80 years ago, and i'm sure countless did before him. but making the statement that America is in trouble doesn't get to the larger issues. Why are we in Iraq? What's going on with those people's lives that they are willing to die? Why shouldn't we send our men to fight? Just because some of them crack up? Maybe, but maybe not. The focus here seems to be that we are sacrificing our "babies" to war, but these aren't babies. They are old adolescents, but they're older than most of our soldiers in other wars. If you want to be anti-war, i'm fine with that. i was against this war myself, but don't try and hit me with parents grieving and sappy songs and pretend like you've examined the real issues.
It's still an all-volunteer army and without a draft, we're unlikely to see the same rebellion as the Vietnam era.
I have yet to see this, but I hope at least one of the dozen or so Iraq movies released in the next 3 months show more than the Huffington post opinion.
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