Mike Deerfield returns to the U.S. after his tour of duty in Iraq and abruptly goes missing. His father Hank, a spit-and-polish ex-MP from the Vietnam era, goes looking for him. What he finds goes to the heart of American combat experiences in the Iraqi conflict. Academy Award®-winning* Crash filmmaker Paul Haggis teams with Oscar®- winning* actors Tommy Lee Jones, Charlize Theron and Susan Sarandon in a probing, powerful, fact-based look at fathers and sons...and at a nation and the young soldiers it sends into battle. Jones plays Hank, whose quest lays bare a tangled web of cover-up, murder, mystery and profound revelation about the personal costs of war.
In career Army officer Hank Deerfield's worldview, the American military exists to bring order to the world, and honor and dignity to every one of its soldiers. As played by Tommy Lee Jones, in a layered performance that will haunt the viewer long after the film is over, Deerfield wears the Army life like he does his standard-issue white T-shirts--unconsciously making a cheap motel bed with crisp inspection-ready corners. Yet if war is hell, the purgatory for the relatives of damaged soldiers can cause far more anguish, and Paul Haggis' quietly devastating In the Valley of Elah tells this story through Deerfield, who is desperately trying to piece together the fate of his adored son Mike, a soldier in Iraq.
Mike's company has returned from duty, but he is missing; Hank flies from Tennessee to Fort Rudd in the Southwest, to conduct his own investigation into the disappearance. There he meets a smart but put-upon police officer (Charlize Theron, glammed-down but still showing a bit too much sexy collarbone for a cop) who also smells something off in the Army's official story of the disappearance. The two form an unlikely team, but as a friend tells Deerfield early on, "You gotta trust somebody sometime, Hank," and Mike's vanishing is Hank's tipping point.
As Hank pieces together the horrifying story of Mike's fate, the incremental pain becomes etched in Jones' ragged features, and the camera captures all of it--far more powerfully than could a million words of reportage from the front lines. Theron's performance is also strong, and Susan Sarandon is moving if underutilized as Hank's grief-stricken wife, robbed of the simple nuclear family life she so wanted. "They shouldn't send heroes to places like Iraq," says one of Mike's buddies late in the film, and it's the viewers' collective sorrow--and the film's great achievement--to feel that at the deepest human level. --A.T. Hurley
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5.0
Dehumanizing effect of the Iraq war:
War is always ugly. It does not matter where it is fought or by whom. Soldiers are active participants in surival games that require them to kill with or without reason in order to preserve their won life or the lives of the people around them. This story is a story of the current generation of young people going to Iraq. They are used to video cameras, simple comforts of every day life, while long stays in a third world country like Iraq are having lasting effects on their psyche. Tommy Lee Jones plays a... more info
GOOD PERFOMANCES CAN'T SAVE THIS OVERLY LONG DRAMA!:
'In The Valley Of Elah is an interesting story with good perfomances by Jones, Sarandon and Theron, but the film's snail pace had me wanting to fast forward at times. Although the story is interesting and sad, showing that war destroys more than the obvious. It's not like we haven't seen this stuff before and I felt like I knew where it was going long before the end of the movie. It's an OK watch about a 2 1/2 star rating, but it's really nothing new.
Typical Anti-war, Anti-American, Hollywood Communist Crap:
Well, the liberals in Hollywood have produced another anti-American propaganda film. To be certain, all war is hell, rotten, miserable, Godless, and ashamedly horrible. Man's inhumanity to man began in the Garden of Eden not the Valley of Elah. And, by the way, the liberal atheist commies couldn't get the battle of David and Goliath correct...no mention of Yahweh, the God of Israel; no mention of who David is; no mention of the insult of the Philistine's against the true God of Israel (the liberals mention... more info
An Important Movie.....:
I have only a few words to say about "In The Valley of Elah". This is a movie that EVERYONE should watch. Not just for the fact that it is a good movie, but as a reminder of what our men and women are having to go through in the service of our country. Anyone that has a son or daughter or relative that is considering going into the service should highly consider watching this movie with that person before enlisting.
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