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Rating:  -
Short Attention Span Summary (SASS):
1. War is hell
2. Coming back home can be worse
Tommy Lee Jones is perfectly cast as Hank Deerfield, a retired sergeant in the Military Police whose son Mike has gone missing shortly after returning home from active duty in Iraq.
Refusing to believe that Mike would go AWOL, Hank gets into his truck and heads off for the Army base to find out what really happened. He runs into the brick wall of Army protocol and the stone wall of the Police when it comes to military matters, and stubbornly sticks his own craggy mug into the investigation.
His tenaciousness and crime scene experience eventually help him to win the respect of Police Detective Emily Sanders (Charlize Theron) who begins assisting him, and together they put together the pieces after some gruesome remains are discovered on Army property. Small but significant roles are played by Susan Sarandon, Jason Patric, James Franco and Josh Brolin, and Frances Fisher is at her most revealing.
Much more than the story of a man searching for his son, this movie is based on actual events, and illustrates the mental trauma that affects some military personnel after their experiences in combat and conflict situations. The Valley of Elah, by the way, is the site of the biblical mismatch between David and Goliath.
A powerful movie that's well worth watching, with stellar performances from Jones and Theron.
Amanda Richards, May 4, 2008
Rating:  -
***1/2
In Paul Haggis' low-keyed drama, "In the Valley of Elah," a retired army officer goes in search of his son, who may have gone AWOL while on leave from Iraq. When Hank Deerfield receives the call informing him that Mike has not reported for duty, the concerned father heads to the army base in New Mexico to try to ascertain the young man's whereabouts and find out what's up.
Stylistically, "Elah" is the polar opposite of Haggis' previous film, the overwrought and overrated "Crash," which fairly screamed its message from every nook and cranny, using its plot points and characters as little more than bludgeons with which to beat the audience into submission. Here, the writer/director has toned things down considerably, finally trusting the drama and characters to speak for themselves. Haggis is obviously against the Iraq War but he doesn`t make speeches about it, preferring instead to let the message filter its way through the story, such as having upbeat news assessments frequently playing on radios and TVs in the background as an ironic counterpoint to the foreground action.
In fact, if anything, the film touches on the subject of the Iraq War almost too obliquely at times, permitting the trite whodunit aspects of the story to take precedence over the human drama. Still, there are some tremendously moving and powerful moments in the film, courtesy of incisive writing by Haggis and shattering performances by Tommy Lee Jones and Susan Sarandan as the young soldier`s parents. Jones, who is rarely off screen for the duration of the movie, conveys the world-weary stoicism of a man torn between a love for the military and a dawning awareness that his lifelong bellicosity might be in some way responsible for what has happened to his son. It's an exquisitely internalized and understated performance. Sarandon receives far less screen time than Jones but still manages to make an indelible impact as a longsuffering woman who may have been forced to go a bridge too far in sacrificing what is most dear to her for her country. A scene in which the two of them talk on the phone is one of the most emotionally wrenching moments in recent movie history. Charlize Theron plays a sympathetic homicide detective who assists Hank in his search for the truth.
At an overlong 122 minutes, "In the Valley of Elah" is in no hurry to tell its story, an admirable philosophy in and of itself, but one that frequently leads to attenuation and a dissipation of passion. Nevertheless, in its own unassuming way, the movie makes its case for how boys are sent off to fight old men's wars (the Valley of Elah is where a young David defeated Goliath) and how they often return home so psychologically scarred and emotionally damaged that they can no longer function in a peacetime setting.
Rating: -
After his career in the military, Hank Deerfield (Jones) settles down for a quiet life with his wife, Joan. He's not particularly worried at first when he learns his son is AWOL after coming back from Iraq--these things happen.
When the local police call to tell him his son's dead, Hank can't believe it and he enlists Emily Sanders (Theron) a local cop to help him solve his case. He gets his clues from his son's cell phone files, credit card receipts and testimony from fellow troop members.
The story's a harsh reminder that the war does not end when "Johnny comes marching home" and many of our troops and their families need help they're not getting from either the military or local officials. While Jones initially is only seeking to find his son, he uncovers a lot more about the realities of war than many of us would want to see. In my opinion, this is Jones' best performance yet.
Rebecca Kyle, April 2008
Rating: -
Tommy Lee gives another oustanding performance. I can't decide which performance I would rate higher, but another solid movie to add to his list.
Rating:  -
This movie was a stereo-typical Hollywood expose
of the problems with those who come back from Iraq.
It is anti-war and more typical of Hollywood than of
reality. The plot was symplistic and so PC you can
guess exactly how each plot sequence is going to work
(boring). It ends up with a Jane Fonda / John Kerry
view of our troops as torturers and murderers. Having
a son in the military I see this as simple American bashing
troop hate speech so typically the Hollywood elites who
seem to be more into America bashing propaganda than
finding out what is really going on in Iraq. One story
is taken and blown up as if it is the norm. Why is it
I never see any stories telling the wonderful things are
troops our doing in Iraq come out of Hollywood. Monolithic,
1984 same-think with never a dissenting voice. Really sad
that our troops daily put their lives on the line while
Hollywood rips up and smears our young men and women.
It ends with an upside down flag flying. The folks in
Hollywood seem stuck in their old Vietnam anti-troop mode.
What a shame. Don't waste your time on this movie. Just
another Jane Fonda American bashing Hollywood perversion
of reality hardly "cutting edge." Stereo-typical and boring.
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