In the Valley of Elah

After his Oscar win for Crash, writer/director Paul Haggis was branded a hack. So many people thought Crash was manipulating, heavy handed, and cheesy. Of course, many of these same people liked the movie up until everyone liked it, but nonetheless people hate Haggis. He is an arrogant outspoken liberal, not unlike Michael Moore. However, Crash taught a good message that sadly still needed to be told and now Haggis is back with a movie based on true events and taking on the War in Iraq. Would his heavy handed, self promoting writing have great results or would it fall on its face?


Hank Deerfield(Tommy Lee Jones) is a war veteran with a son in Iraq. He gets a call one morning that his son as gone A.W.O.L and Hank packs a suitcase, fixes his truck and heads out to the base to find out for himself. He is met with open arms, sort of. He is kind of an Army legend and so all of the soldiers are nice and no one seems to know where his son went off to. Emily Sanders(Charlize Theron)is a detective searching for respect in her station because all of the other detective believe she slept her way into a detective badge. Hank comes to her in hopes of finding the missing person, but because his son is Army, Sanders tells him there is nothing she or anyone else can do. The military polices its own, after all. A body is found cut up and burned and it is determined it is Hank's son. The military takes over because it happens on military property, an abandoned field, but Hank convinces Emily that it actually took place on the side of the road and then the body was dragged. So, Emily takes over and she and Hank try and find out what happened. Inter cut in this movie are videos Hank's son took from his cellphone while in Iraq. The videos are very low quality and often cut out, but it gives Hank an idea of who is son is and what he was doing while in Iraq. It is not pretty.


The Valley of Elah is a reference to the story in The Bible of David and Goliath. It is the valley between the two warring armies. The valley is where David slew Goliath, proving that it is often the smarter man not the bigger who wins, or it is just about facing fears, standing in the face of danger are doing something about it. Either way, the analogy of David and Goliath does not work in this movie for me. Hank tells Emily's son the story one night and then at the end of the movie Emily tells it to her son again, but I believe it meant to be a much more powerful metaphor for the overall movie, but I never saw it. I am not sure who or what was supposed to be David and who or what was supposed to be Goliath. Maybe I just didn't catch it, but it seemed like kind of a stretch to me. That being said, the movie is quite good, if not a bit heavy handed. Yet, I knew going in what to expect from Paul Haggis. The movie is excruciatingly slow paced and at times there are long segments of no dialogue, but it always manages to stay gripping. The anti climatic resolution leaves one a bit annoyed, but if you think about for a few seconds you realize that is the point of the message. That message being "War turns young men out and leaves them unable to function in regular life." Not a new message by any stretch of the imagination, but it is effectively done here. The screenplay is far from Crash because the dialogue is sparse and only once or twice does someone actually go on a heavy handed diatribe.


Tommy Lee Jones has the face of a man who has lived. each line seems to represent a decade or an era. His expressions minimal, but effective and his body language is perfect here. The character of Hank is an interesting one, as he starts the movie as a hard core Army guy, full of restraint and rules and ending someone completely different. It is a nice transition made and Haggis accomplishes it slyly. Jones helps by slowly tearing the layers away from Hank's core, but if you see the movie pay attention to Hank's hotel room, it will tell you everything you need to know. As for Theron, she takes a part that could easily have been a one note role and she runs with it. I like that Haggis focused moments on just her character and her life because it lets us care more about her and help us understand why she wants this case so badly. The friendship forged by the two main characters is heavy and intense but it is also warm.


It is a very straight forward movie lacking the overlapping non linear motion of Haggis' other screenplays but we get everything we need from the war in those home videos. The message is brought home a little more hard than it needed to be, I think, but it still works and doesn't take away from a very solid film. Jones seems to be doing his best work as of late and this movie fails without him. Also, you kind of have to forgive the final moment for being way too obvious and borderline corny and look at it not how we would but what it says about the transition of Hank Deerfield. If you look at the real crime it is based on you find obvious differences and Haggis did manipulate the story to fit the message he wanted to get across, but again, the movie works so that doesn't much matter.