The following review contains spoilers for "In the Valley of Elah."
In Biblical terms, the valley of Elah was the place where young upstart David took down the fearsome Goliath. The story of these two figures is told by Hank Deerfield (Tommy Lee Jones), a small town gravel hauler and a retired sergeant, as he tries to figure out what happened to his son, an army specialist whose remains have been found burned after he and his squad returned from Iraq.
David and Goliath can be compared to any struggle in which a person of lesser strength takes on-and bloodies the nose of-a more formidable opponent. In this case, the United States is Goliath, Iraqi insurgents in the Middle East represent David. As the tale goes, Goliath challenged every soldier in the opposing army in the valley of Elah. No one dared take on the giant, until David simply requested armor to battle Goliath. Then, just as the two are about to collide, David took aim with his slingshot, planting a stone between Goliath´s eyes. With his skull broken, Goliath retreated.
That tale is imperative to understanding writer/director Paul Haggis´ "In the Valley of Elah." Throughout the film, Jones´s Deerfield is shown to be a patriot, believing in the American flag, the American ideal and anything else American. Even when the news of his son Jonathan going AWOL upon returning to the states, he still remains committed to the cause. But as more information about Jonathan comes to light-what the deployment in Iraq did to him and his squad…and presumably every other man and woman there-he begins to see things in a different light.
This is really the story of two people: Hank Deerfield and Emily Sanders (Charlize Theron, nearly unrecognizable in a good way here). Both are devoted to their own causes: Hank to Jonathan and Emily to helping the underdog. In her introduction, Emily is seen trying to help a woman whose husband killed the family dog in front of their child after coming home from active duty. She´s mocked by her colleagues-she also apparently slept with her chief-because of her empathy. It´s that empathy, though, which allows her to understand Hank needs to know something is going on, to give him the benefit of the doubt when he wants to see where Jonathan´s body has been found.
What unfurls like a flag in the wind is a tangled web of lies and deceit coming at Hank and Emily from every conceivable angle. The army ran a shoddy investigation; local police drove over a crime scene; squad members lie on multiple occasions about Jonathan´s last day; Hank wanting to keep his wife Joan (Susan Sarandon) at arms length through the process. The mechanics aren´t important: who was involved in drugs, the video on a recovered cell phone, why any of it really happened. What is important is that the faith in the system and the mission is shaken to its roots for a man who willingly gave parts of his own life in the service.
For a man who believes in things like duty, honor and country, the history he reconstructs from the information available chips away at his foundation little by little. This clearly isn´t the military he remembers, he loves. It´s something new, with young recruits all with their own issues. Jones plays Hank with little outward emotion, even at the sight of his burned son´s dismembered body. His voice barely raises above a whisper, but it´s the fire, sadness, love, despair in his eyes which tells the tale. He´s a strong man early on; by the end, he´s all but broken.
At times he comes off as sanctimonious, as if he knows how to do everyone else´s job better than they can do it. The way he talks to witnesses, the method in which he interacts with Joan. He´s arrogant nearly to a fault, causing all the audience´s sympathy to be placed with Joan, a character who gets entirely too little screen time. She´s not part of the story, just an accessory because Jonathan had to have a mother. The dynamic between Emily and Hank would have fundamentally changed if both Deerfield´s had been investigating. Plus, a level head was needed to get through the situation rationally. As much as Hank looks like a bastard for not showing much emotion, Joan is the polar opposite: presumably throwing furniture upon the news of what has happened, for instance.
I´ll admit I was on the fence about "In the Valley of Elah" for the majority of its running time. I admired the calm tone Haggis took with the script and direction, choosing to tell a story instead of bashing the audience over the head with a message (like in "Crash"). But make no mistake: there is a message here. It doesn´t come through until the final scene of the film, in which Hank gives a tattered American flag to a local school. Before he leaves for Jonathan´s base, he tells the janitor what an upside down flag means: help, we´re in way over our heads, SOS. When the final symbol of freedom is raised, the stripes ripped like 13 smaller flags, upside down, we get it. And we know Hank gets it. This conflict, this situation, this war which has made people commit the most heinous of acts is wrong. Not on a political level or a military level, but on a personal one. For a man who is red, white and blue to the bone admitting to that is the message. Nothing is worth the lives and minds and futures of people in the line of fire. It´s the rationale of the film: the collateral cost of military actions.
"In the Valley of Elah" will be heavy handed for some, offend others political beliefs and come to the wrong conclusion for others. It is, however, the type of low key, unexplosive, personal story of the Iraq War that needs to be told. "United 93" and "World Trade Center" showed us the stories of the people involved in the September 11th attacks; "A Mighty Heart" detailed an innocent being caught in the crossfire. This film is the human military tragedy. It rates a somber 7.5 out of 10, easily one of the best of the year.