DVD Review: In the Valley of Elah

DVD Reviews

By Jeff Swindoll Feb 21, 2008, 16:06 GMT

Nominated for an Oscar, Tommy Lee Jones dominates the screen as a tough-as-nails ex-MP that has to figure out the mystery behind the death of his son. However, what he finds might shake his faith in both the military and his country.

Hank Deerfield (Tommy Lee Jones) is a man who has had his life shaped by his military service. So much so that he can’t sleep in a hotel room bed until he’s remade it according to military specifications.

He gets a call that his son, a soldier serving in Iraq, has returned home on leave. This is a surprise to Hank since he’s not heard a word from his son and calls to his son’s cell phone go unreturned. Calls to the base yield no further information and no sign of his son, so he packs up his pickup truck and drives to the base in New Mexico. Leaving his fretting wife Joan (Susan Sarandon) behind to keep up the home front. When Hank can’t get any useful information out of either Lt. Kirklander (Jason Patric) he turns to local police detective Emily Sanders (Charlize Theron) but doesn’t have much faith in her either. An even bigger mystery opens up with the body of Hank’s son is found and the solution to that mystery might shake Hank’s beliefs In the Valley of Elah gets its name from Hank telling story of David and Goliath to Sanders’ son. At first I thought it might be a town in Iraq but it comes from that bedtime story that Hank relates. In the Valley of Elah had the bad timing to come out at the box office when several films deemed anti-military were hitting the theater and none of them were successful. It’s somewhat of a shame since, although I could be wrong, I really didn’t see the film as too anti-military. War is hell and that’s just the plain facts. Such a situation causes some men to behave badly. Obviously Tommy Lee Jones’ character came back from ‘Nam with his sanity seemingly intact. Well, we might question that since he seems emotionally distant, but we do sympathize with his character. Many others didn’t come back from that war with any semblance of sanity. You could take the story behind Valley of Elah and impose it upon any war, with a change of certain technological plot points, and it would fit. The power behind the story is the performance of Jones and he delivers in spades.

In addition to Jones, the film benefits from Theron’s performance as the only girl in the all boy’s club of her police station. I can see how some will interpret it to be anti-war in Iraq; the film doesn’t exactly cast that situation in the best of lights. However, it seems to me that those individual characters made bad decisions for themselves that caused the events of the film. If you look at the film as a murder mystery that just happens to involve the army then you’ll find an excellent film, if you’re offended by the potential black eye to the military. If you’re not a fan of the Iraq war you’ll find something that you feel will bolster your case, but again you’ll find an excellent film. In the Valley of Elah is presented in anamorphic widescreen (2.35:1) and is enhanced for 16x9 televisions. Special features include a 27-minute featurette on the making of the film and a 15-minute featurette about the filmmaker’s views on the war. A 7-minute additional scene features a dropped subplot about Hank’s son girlfriend that is actually quite touching. I thought that In the Valley of Elah was a film in the vein of 1984’s A Soldier’s Story and involved just as interesting performances and plot. Both sides of political spectrum can possibly find arguments for their points of view, but both will manage to see an excellent film.