Geirmund Knutsen reviews In the Valley of Elah

Regardless of which connotation Paul Haggis aims for with In the Valley of Elah, his slingshot misses its target.

Paul Haggis’ latest offering, In the Valley of Elah, follows a string of ambitious narratives attempting to talk the American psyche out of it’s post-9/11 neurosis. The multi-cultural awareness vehicle Crash won Haggis a best motion picture at the 2006 Oscars; the historical double-apology Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima reconfigured patriotism a little with the near-insignificant revelation that public relations matter even in the time of war; In the Valley of Elah is a soul-searching critique of recent US foreign policy ventures in Iraq through the effects felt at home.

Based on true events, the story follows a father’s (Tommy Lee Jones as Hank Deerfield) search for his soldier son who has gone AWOL since his return from a period in Iraq. The search soon becomes an investigation into his murder when the son’s charred remains are found on military grounds. Well, in fact, the actual murder took place on public property before the body was moved, as is established by the ex-military policeman Deerfield when he is shown the crime scene by the good Samaritan Detective Sanders (Charlize Theron). This allows the distractingly pretty Sanders to muscle the investigation back from the jurisdiction of the military, through a number of implausible encounters, providing the definitive low-points of the film. The redeeming feature is perhaps the banality of the murder, which was seemingly a random event among friends, rather than the often-used conspiratorial military cover-up. This turn of events allows the viewer to accept that the effects of war are terrible, without apportioning blame on war’s tools, and spurs him or her on to seek an understanding at a more fundamental level. Such a sense of inquisitive liberation is, however, brief, and comes to an end when a ragged US flag is hoisted upside-down in the final scene, signalling distress at a national level.

In the Valley of Elah is not a bad film; it is simply a disappointing use of three former Academy Award winners, where the value of Susan Sarandon’s part starts and stops with her impressive real-life affiliation with anti-war activism, Theron’s talent is drowned by her looks in a part which requires a ‘nobody’ detective for it to be believable, and the presence of both Lee Jones and Josh Brolin in another ‘outback’ setting begs the question whether the budgets and locations for this and No Country For Old Men were somehow conjoined. Further, this dreary story with a somewhat condescending message to its audience, adds to the growing genre of post-9/11 reflections, which is itself beginning to have a tangible effect on the world. Such an effect is evidenced in several arenas, one of which is academia where UCL now offers a ‘post-9/11 literature’ module in English. Many literary topics have come and gone since the inception of English as a study, and very few are deserved of a permanent place in the field. Although the introduction of this module is hardly a result of Haggis’ work, his films help to condition our minds into accepting the presupposition that the world has been different since that morning.

In the Valley of Elah is available now on DVD at £19.99.