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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
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 Tommy Lee Jones is brilliant, brilliant, brilliant |
| Review Date: June 20, 2010 |
| Reviewer: Jody, Northwest Ohio |
The over long Valley of Elah delivers its anti-war sermon with all the subtlety of a sledghammer. Trust us, we get it. War turns people into creatures their parents don't recognize. It always has and it always will--that's what war is, and several much better movies have addressed it, like The Deer Hunter and Born on the Fourth of July. If VOE had contented itself with being a murder mystery and character study and let us draw our own conclusions on the order of The Hurt Locker, it would have been a much more powerful film. As it is, we're bludgeoned by both the main plot and an unnecessary subplot about an Army wife who is terrified of her husband. Throw in an element about how the flag is flown just in case we missed things the first time around, and the message becomes borderline insulting.
Inspired by a true story as is most fiction, the gist of the plot is that Pvt. Mike Deerfield has gone AWOL shortly after returning from combat in Iraq. His father Hank, who just happens to be an ex MP is alerted to Mike's status by a phone call from the base attempting to locate him. Hank solves the case despite the obstacles and lack of enthusiasm he gets from the Army and the local police and some very painful information he unearths. And oh, yeah--did I tell you the Army and the local police weren't helping much? The title comes from the Biblical location of David's epic slaying of Goliath, but I have no idea what that has to do with this story.
*Spoiler Alert*
What is given the buildup for a grand conspiracy turns out to be a squalid, pointless Saturday night crime rather easily solved.
That said, this movie is a must see for the splendid acting which makes the weak script irrelevant. Charlize Theron is a wonderfully understated detective, Susan Sarandon is heartbreaking as Mike's mother, and Josh Brolin is a splendid good ol' boy police chief. The standout however, is Tommy Lee Jones' exquisitely nuanced performance. As Hank, Jones manages to balance and make believable an experienced investigator's exasperation with incompetence, a father's guilt, love and pain, and a soldier's discipline. It's one of the most amazing things I've ever seen and thank goodness the director had enough sense to spend a lot of time on Jones' face. At best, this movie would rate two stars for script alone, and three stars only without Jones' stunning performance. See this movie for the acting alone. It's worth it. |
Solid material, well done, but not much memorable
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| Review Date: May 13, 2010 |
| Reviewer: David Masters, Wilton, NH |
It's a good movie - I'd give it a 7 or 8 out of 10. It moves slow, but it does move. There's no really spectacular, stand out moment to the movie, nothing instantly memorable. And while it's about people returning from the battlefield, what they've seen and done, how they can't adjust to 'civilian' life, it doesn't really touch on any of that except briefly; it dances around the subject. There's no lecturing on any one subject, which is good, but on the other hand it doesn't seem to pay any attention to any one subject. But then, the movie does focus on the people involved, and in that it does a good job.
Tommy Lee Jones is one of those that for me are hit or miss - I like him in some things (such as "The Fugitive" or "M.I.B."), don't like him in others. He does a good job here - the role fits him. Charlize Theron... she's usually very good, and she is in this as well. She can be a chameleon, fitting into the part, but it doesn't quite feel like she fit into this - she tries damn hard, but it just misses by a hair. Plus she's just too damn good looking for the role. Susan Sarandon barely has much of a part in this, but she fits right into it - very good, very well done. Reviews, etc have mentioned Josh Brolin - probably because he's a 'name', because he has less than five minutes of screen time in this. Basic stuff, and I guess he does it well enough.
It's something that I'm glad I've seen, and that I'll probably watch again at some point. It's worth what I paid for it, and that's all that can really be said.
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amazing must see film
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| Review Date: April 26, 2010 |
| Reviewer: O. Rios, Texas |
i checked out The Valley of Elah and i've got to say that it was a great, sad, well acted must see film.
The film has an all-star cast with subperb acting from Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin, Susan Sarandon, Jason Patric, James Franco and Charlize Theron, who is amazing in this film.
The movie is based on actual events revolving the murder of Army Soldier Richard Davis.
Lee plays father Hank Deerfield, who receives a phone call from the army base that his son has gone AWOL. Hank doesn't know that his son has returned from Iraq for a brief stay and goes off to find out what happend. Once there, he finds out that the remains of his son have been found, and what begins to unravel is a story of deciet, sadness, and the loss of humanity.
Throughout the film, Hank is viewing clips of vidoes from his son's camera showing events from their combat in Iraq, including burned and chared bodies.
The film really centers around Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and the overall effect it has on soldiers returning from Iraq back into their homeland. From drug use, to sudden nightmare flashes, to brief scares. The film explore the loss of humanity and the overall effects of PTSD.
It's a great film and the acting is authentic and realistic. I would recommend The Valley of Elah if you want to see a good overall film. |
Great movie
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| Review Date: December 30, 2009 |
| Reviewer: JFC, Lakewood, CO |
| I told my officemate about this movie and he rented it from Netflix and also liked it. |
Disordered World
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| Review Date: October 27, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Rodney J. Moss, |
| With the fresh spate of suicidal bombings violating the impending election in Iraq, my viewing of Haggis's terrifying, Valley' has added resonance. Yes, so many war films have urged us to outrage, to sense the futility, the heroics, the cruelty, the power plays and their perversions. But not since, 'The Deerhunter', have the chilling consequences of violence been so devastatingly enunciated. It is no surprise that the tale has connexions to an actual event (albeit tenuously, as a lead reviewer notes. Though I don't mind that Haggis even uses the actual dad as a surrogate authority for his own film's moral integrity).We need feel the sympathy and ramifications of all the characters caught in the malestrom(though I do think the young woman found murdered in the bath is stacking the cards too high even for these dramtic ends. And the inverted flag is flawed overstatement. T L Jones, whose gritty and sullen demanour has made him the perfect messenger, this decade, for late mid-life crises roles, chases down the causes for his son's death. He will tally his own contribution in this saga, having been reminded by his wife(a nicely understated performance by Saradon). The old-boy's network is unravelling. The new kid's deal with their stresses in unprecedented ways, and the lines once drawn in the sand have been erased. |
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