Some Unholy War

In the harrowing times in which we live, it has become immensely difficult to avoid the war in Iraq. It is on every news station, on the cover of every paper and magazine, and is in the hearts and minds of our nation’s citizens. Now Hollywood is getting in on the action with a host of new films focusing on all aspects of the war and the people it affects. One of those films is Paul Haggis’s “In the Valley of Elah,” a timely and graceful film that is both entertaining and quietly brilliant.

The film stars Tommy Lee Jones (“The Fugitive” and “JFK”) as Hank Deerman, a former Army sergeant and Vietnam veteran, who goes to find his recently disappeared son Mike shortly after he returns home from Iraq. When he arrives at the base, no one seems to know where he is, but they don’t seem to be very forthcoming with information either. He visits the local bars and strip clubs looking for any leads and clues, and the police don’t want really seem to want to deal with him. That is, except Detective Emily Sanders (Charlize Theron), a tough woman who continually is trying to prove herself and her contemporaries that she is worthy of the job. The whole case seems to go rather cold until pieces of a body are found in field that are later determined to be those of Mike.

As the film continues, it unfolds like a thrilling crime drama: intriguing, intense, and urgent. Unfortunately, not all crime thrillers are given such revelatory performances like one from Tommy Lee Jones in this film. Jones’s performance is a work of sheer brilliance. It’s a quiet struggle for his character, but he plays it with every emotion and feeling right there on his heavily-wrinkled face. His character, Hank, is a man conflicted; conflicted between the duty and honor he knows and understands as a former military man and as a father full of rage and sadness for his own son’s death.

Theron does some of her best work in years, and Susan Sarandon, who plays Hank’s long-suffering military wife, glows in her few scenes. The film is a sharp, incisive look at the effects of war on the psyche and emotions of the men and women who see this chaos first hand and then try to find some meaning in it. Compared to Haggis’s last directorial effort “Crash,” which beat its message of racism and intolerance into its audience’s skulls with a mallet of contrived plot points and overly-preachy moments, Mr. Haggis has allowed his message to gently breeze through the film and permeate its consciousness while still keeping the story grounded in reality. Gorgeously shot, beautifully acted, and terribly important, “In the Valley of Elah” is the right movie at the right time. A