John's Movie Musings

In the Valley of Elah is a movie centered around the war, but not so much about it. It treats it as a fact of life and the story itself could be told in any number of situations.

Tommy Lee Jones plays a dad whose son goes AWOL days after returning from Iraq. There have been plenty of "find my son" movies in the past and this one holds up well. Except for the end that I'll get to later.

The plot is very well told and of course Tommy Lee Jones and Charlize Theron give excellent performances. The writers give you enough information to string you along and the movie had my full attention the whole way through it.

Now I expected the tone of the movie to be anti-war. And it is. But it crosses another line and appears to have an anti-military bend to it. That bothered me as I didn't feel the director didn't need to go there. The plot was strong enough on its own that I didn't need him injecting his own thoughts into scenes.

That all culminates at the end.

The character Tommy Lee Jones plays is well defined in the movie. He's a man of character, with some very notable flaws. However, in the last scene, the director strips all that character away and replaces it with himself. This causes Tommy Lee Jones to do something that was really unnecessary. It made me angry and really turned me off of the rest of the movie. Which is sad because the rest is so very good.

So I don't know how to recommend this. One the one hand, it has a great story you will probably enjoy. But the end put me in a really bad mood.

I think I'm going to tip the scales to the negative. If you've seen this, let me know what you thought of the last scene.


Grade: C-