In the Valley of Elah wuz robbed
Months ago, when Paul Haggis’ In the Valley of Elah opened here, the Weekly called it ‘one of the best movies of the year.’ And so it was. We also said that Tommy Lee Jones gave the best performance of his career, and so he did. (The academy nominated it for a best performance Oscar.) However, the movie tanked spectacularly at the boxoffice, taking in only $6.9 million. Now, however, Valley is out on DVD, and we once again recommend it.
The best movie yet about the Iraq war and its fallout, the bulk of this beautifully-done movie takes place in the U.S., where the soldier-son of a retired careerist M.P. (Tommy Lee Jones) returns from the war; and is murdered. His father then begins his quest to find the truth about the murder–and his son. (The boy’s mother–Susan Sarandon–stays at home, devastated: this is the second son they’ve lost.)
Jones, of course, stumbles into a nest of war politics, tangles with the local police dealing with the murder, and sees, up-close and personal, the other recently returning soldiers, some the close friends of his son. Jones is dismayed (and moved) by the realities of this post-modern war, fought not only on battlefields, but by electronic surveillance in both the U.S. and Iraq. The spit-and-polish father is both enlightened and befuddled, and begins to understand the sometimes-feral behavior of some of the returnees.
Searching through the honky-tonks and backways near his son’s base, including locales already looked at by the police, Jones is then aided and abetted by a policewoman (Charlize Theron, almost unrecognizable), who is not taken seriously by her colleagues. (She is thought to have slept her way into her police position.)
What happens in the final reels of this genuinely powerful drama should not be detailed here, but its ‘meaning’ can be correlated in the David-and-Goliath story Jones tells Theron’s young son–where the combatants square off in the valley of Elah.
There’s nothing feel-good about this tale directed by Paul Haggis (screenwriter for Million Dollar Baby, Crash); and it might never find the audience it deserves. But Blu-Ray gives us another a chance, and sooner or later this film might receive recognition as the classic it is. Try see.
