In The Valley Of Elah (2007) [Blu-ray]
Crime | Drama | Mystery | Thriller

Mike Deerfield returns to the U.S. after his tour of duty in Iraq and abruptly goes missing. His father Hank (Jones), 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 and powerful look at a nation and the young soldiers it sends into battle. Hank's quest lays bare a tangled web of cover-up, murder, mystery and profound revelation about the personal costs of war.

User Comment: bpreston41-1 from Canada, 29 September 2007 • Only Roger Ebert and the reviewer for Rolling Stone seem to see the truth here: this film is slow and elegiac because it deals with heavy matters, but it is never boring, not if you understand the situation and the depth of feelings being explored. It's as if reviewers don't get it because they didn't really feel what the film is saying. Saying that there have been dozens of films about how war ruins men so it's a cliché, and that this one is too dreary and slow means that a person has stopped feeling for what is really hurtful, is even in denial. And that's the theme of this film: what happens when we lose touch with what's painful and don't care any more. The film is restrained but powerful, which is why it has such a strong effect.

Jones is wonderfully grim, with a face like a road map, as he explores what happened to his son. Charlize Theron is beautiful even though she is playing a woman who is forced to act as non-sexy as possible to get on in her job in a male police force. Susan Sarandon is not, as some critic said, "underused"; she gives a performance that is all the more powerful because it is restrained. This movie should be a must see for all who believe that the Iraq war should continue until there is an honorable time for America to leave. That time is already passed.

Summary: Why do most critics attack this film for being heavy-handed?.

[CSW] -2- Waiting for the unanswered questions to be answered keeps you immersed in the film but the PTSD part goes way out on a limb trying to portray a horrible situation as even more horrible for the sake of a political statement.
[V4.0-A3.5] MPEG-4 AVC - No D-Box motion codes were available at the time of this rental although they are available now.

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