Reviewed
by Lamar Kukuk
10/5/07
We
don't get it. Liberal or conservative, pro- or anti-war, we presume
to speak for “The Troops”, to tailor our public face and those of others
to what we think might make their jobs easier, and generally to make decisions
on their behalf so certain that even though the vast majority of us has
never gotten closer to a war zone than our TV set, we KNOW what it's like
Over There. Paul Haggis's In the Valley of Elah is superficially
a murder-mystery, and a well-crafted one at that. But its' heart
lies in a greater mystery: what the war in Iraq is doing to the hearts,
minds, and souls of the people fighting it.
Hank
Deerfield (Tommy Lee Jones) is proud of his time as a military policeman,
and proud of his son Mike (Jonathan Tucker), who's currently stationed
in Iraq. Or so he thought: he gets a call stating that not
only has Mike's unit returned to the States, but he's gone AWOL.
Hank loads up his truck, tells his wife Joan (Susan Sarandon) not to worry,
and hits the road to do what he does best: investigate. When
he arrives at his son's base, he's greeted with nothing but sympathy and
support. But the answers he gets from the officers there are all
subtly inaccurate, and he turns to the local police and Detective Emily
Sanders (Charlize Theron). She tells him there's nothing they can
do, and there doesn't seem to be much they WANT to do. Even when
Mike's body turns up chopped into little pieces by the side of the road,
they're happy to find a procedural reason to kick the case back to the
military police, led by cover-up happy Lt. Kirklander (Jason Patric).
But Hank can't stop asking questions, and soon he's got Emily asking them
too. Was Mike's death drug related? What about Private Ortiez
(Victor Wolf), who's also AWOL? What really happened the last time
Mike's friends saw him alive? And can Hank stand the truth he's so
desperate to discover?
Before
rising to fame by writing back-to-back Best Picture Oscar Winners Million
Dollar Baby (sensational characters and dialog, questionable story)
and Crash (self-important nonsense), Paul Haggis was best known
for his work on TV crime shows like L.A. Law and Walker, Texas
Ranger. That experience serves him well here, with a clever,
well-structured mystery that combines with his nuanced characters and intriguing
themes to create a real, full-bodied story. He hides some clues in
plain sight, others in the background. There's the obvious issue
of cell phone videos Mike took in the field that are gradually being decrypted
and e-mailed to Hank, but other equally important information is mentioned
only in passing. It would probably be an impossible mystery to solve
on one's own, but once the details all click into place, the reveal is
absolutely awesome.
The
last few years haven't been the best of Tommy Lee Jones' career, but he's
one of our best actors and it's great to see him back on top of his game.
Hank is a perfect match for his skills: stoic, smart and taking absolutely
no crap. Theron is in the perverse position of being a stunningly
beautiful woman who's best in blue-collar roles, and Emily is one of her
best characters. It's entirely possible that she really did sleep
her way into the Detective job she now holds just like her co-workers suspect
(watch her throw observations Hank made to her in their faces as her own
as proof that she deserves it), but his example makes her start to think
of her duties as more than just a job. Hank and Emily are, oddly,
kind of an art house buddy movie team, feeding off their contrasts without
having to have the Bonding Fistfight, and the movie improves considerably
once it finally puts them together. I particularly liked the sequence
where she has him over for dinner and he bonds with her young son (Devin
Brochu) in which Hank tells the kid the David and Goliath story for which
the movie is titled and shares a little manly parenting advice with Emily.
While their performances are exceptional, the film is filled with smaller
ones that provide essential support. Sarandon has a pair of painful
scenes facing the death of her son, and she and Jones share the ease (and
smoldering resentment) of a long-married couple. I can't properly
praise him without giving away the killer, but once he's revealed, the
actor's confession is a showstopper.
And
for all the skill the movie brings to its' murder mystery and its' characters,
it's this part of the film that takes it to another level. Hank is
puzzling out two mysteries at once: the what, and the why.
The later requires him to really understand what fighting in Iraq was like
for his son and his fellow soldiers, to go beyond the brief phone calls
and pictures and to really imagine what it's like to be surrounded by,
and in some cases responsible for, such horror on a daily basis.
Haggis does a great job mixing up the flashbacks: slicing them into
bits and pieces to isolate images, sounds and facts from their context.
When he puts everything together at the end, the effect is devastating.
While
it's a matter of life and death for those in the field, for us at home,
the war is first and foremost a partisan political issue, and many will
be unable to look at In the Valley of Elah (or any of the fall's
many coming Iraq-based films) as anything other than a political statement.
The final shot makes it very clear where Haggis stands, and it's a film
unlikely to be enjoyed by those with Support the Troops magnets on their
cars. But it's their loss: In the Valley of Elah tells
a powerful story that challenges us with the fundamental question of any
military conflict: Is It Worth It? Not only because of the
dead, but also the survivors, many of whom have paid a price we can't even
imagine from the safety of our theater seats. |
