In the Valley of Elah (2007)

In the Valley of Elah. Film review. Some said that it was the best film that takes the recent Iraq crisis as a subject to date. I had a considerable hard time to believe that it was so. But, it's not that i could easily came up with another film about Iraq that superior to this film. As hard as i might to look for the superior quality of this film (i've got a decent an hour and a half - while waiting for the rain to subdue - to thought about it), the easiest i came up with, was Tommy Lee Jones (it's either him or Daniel Day Lewis to win this year's Academy Awards as a Best Actor).

When Hank Deerfield (Tommy Lee Jones) was asked to read "The Witch, The Lion, and the Wardrobe" to Emily Sanders (Charlize Theron)'s child as a bedtime story, he opted instead to told a story about David and Goliath in the valley of Elah. There must be a reason why Paul Haggis had chosen the hame of this valley as a title. If he does, who was the film's David? Who was the film's Goliath? And who had won?

One morning, David woke up to a telephone from an army base asked for his son, Mike to report back immediately to the base for he has been AWOL since he's coming back from Iraq. This puzzled David as for a soldier to get AWOLed, he must've been already back from Iraq for a quite some time, and he, who had thought that he is fairly close to his son, had never received any calls or emails from his son saying that he was already home. As Hankwent to the base (and the city that's in the proximity) to look for his son, soon, he was discovered that his son was found dead. His remain chopped to pieces and burned. With the help of a detective, Emily, he tries to uncover the nature of his son's death.

At best, this film doesn't exclusively deal with the investigation of the murder with a conclusion of who did the killing and why was the ultimate answers that the film tries to presents. Instead, the film spend an almost two hours of its running time to lure us into believe that war dehumanized human beings. As simple as that. It is probably my lack of knowledge, but as i dwelve further into the film afterwards, i found that the association with "The Valley of Elah" was making more less sense than it should. It was something pretentious from Paul Haggis. That, and the fact that the final shot of the film was at its ultimate cheesiness it made me cringe, further stained the experience. This is the film, when you asked me, which stories doesn't really matters, shadowed by great performance of its actors and saved by it. Tommy Lee Jones looks so old in here, he's showing some vigor and strength even amidst the realization of the loss of his son. However, between his spoken words, you certainly feel the faint tremble of his strength, and the scene where he was home, where he was no longer channeled his grief into investigations is totally heartbreaking. Charlize Theron is a beautiful actress, really beautiful. But her best performances so far was when she looks simple and natural. Here, she portrays a normal working woman, and her natural beauty was just a faint idea faded behind a serious average working person who did her best at her job. Everything else is just well... rather shallow.