In the Valley of Elah 8

We saw this a year later, and on TV, but my firm belief is that this is the one movie about the Iraq war, so far at least, that will stand the test of time. (We tried to watch The Deer Hunter the other night, to see if that plays a similar role for Vietnam, but the over-lengthy wedding scene so drained our interest that we never made it to the war.) That the war is immoral, that we don’t have a clear mission, that innocent Iraqis are being killed, that young American lives are being ruined, that the war in general is “fucked up” – all these messages came through loud and clear, even though that is not what Valley of Elah is about, and none of it takes place in Iraq. It’s that indirection that makes the political point so powerful.

What the movie is otherwise about is the battle of a determined father (Tommy Lee Jones) against both military and civilian bureaucracy and the search for his son’s killer. Jones is brilliant in an Oscar-worthy role (moreso than in No Country for Old Men), and Charlize Theron is awfully good, too. Jones is heroic, but he’s also stubborn, short on empathy, and when he realizes he, too, has played a part in his son’s death, his character takes on a complexity that, Lear-like, expands the tragedy.

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