Product Description

Mike Deerfield returns to the U.S. after his tour of duty in Iraq and abruptly goes missing. His father Hank a spit-and-polish ex-MP from the Vietnam era goes looking for him. What he finds goes to the heart of American combat experiences in the Iraqi conflict. Academy Award?-winning* Crash filmmaker Paul Haggis teams with Oscar?- winning* actors Tommy Lee Jones Charlize Theron and Susan Sarandon in a probing powerful fact-based look at fathers and sons?and at a nation and the young soldiers it sends into battle. Jones plays Hank whose quest lays bare a tangled web of cover-up murder mystery and profound revelation about the personal costs of war.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA/MILITARY & WAR UPC: 085391176275 Manufacturer No: 117627

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1539 in DVD
• Brand: Warner Brothers
• Released on: 2008-02-19
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish, French
• Dubbed in: French, Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: 1.25 pounds
• Running time: 121 minutes

Amazon.com
In career Army officer Hank Deerfield's worldview, the American military exists to bring order to the world, and honor and dignity to every one of its soldiers. As played by Tommy Lee Jones, in a layered performance that will haunt the viewer long after the film is over, Deerfield wears the Army life like he does his standard-issue white T-shirts--unconsciously making a cheap motel bed with crisp inspection-ready corners. Yet if war is hell, the purgatory for the relatives of damaged soldiers can cause far more anguish, and Paul Haggis' quietly devastating In the Valley of Elah tells this story through Deerfield, who is desperately trying to piece together the fate of his adored son Mike, a soldier in Iraq.

Mike's company has returned from duty, but he is missing; Hank flies from Tennessee to Fort Rudd in the Southwest, to conduct his own investigation into the disappearance. There he meets a smart but put-upon police officer (Charlize Theron, glammed-down but still showing a bit too much sexy collarbone for a cop) who also smells something off in the Army's official story of the disappearance. The two form an unlikely team, but as a friend tells Deerfield early on, "You gotta trust somebody sometime, Hank," and Mike's vanishing is Hank's tipping point.

As Hank pieces together the horrifying story of Mike's fate, the incremental pain becomes etched in Jones' ragged features, and the camera captures all of it--far more powerfully than could a million words of reportage from the front lines. Theron's performance is also strong, and Susan Sarandon is moving if underutilized as Hank's grief-stricken wife, robbed of the simple nuclear family life she so wanted. "They shouldn't send heroes to places like Iraq," says one of Mike's buddies late in the film, and it's the viewers' collective sorrow--and the film's great achievement--to feel that at the deepest human level. --A.T. Hurley

Customer Reviews

Another Piece of Fiction Claiming to Be Based on True Events
As soon as I saw the, "Based on True Events" disclaimer at the beginning of the film, I immediately became suspicious that the film would use dramatic license too liberally.

And it did. Yes, some soldiers murdered another soldier. Yes, they tried to burn the remains. But that's where the similarities end.

This is just another despicable, "The war is making baby killers out of our boys" film that exploits a true life tragedy to advance anti-war sentiment...and dishonors the other brave men and women who did serve honorably in Iraq.

Everything else depicted in the film did not happen--no cell phone with graphic videos of events in Iraq, no father doing his own detective work, no fried chicken after the murder, no brother who also got killed in Iraq, no assisting female detective, no sexist pig detectives, no suicide, no stonewalling military police, no city police unwilling to investigate...

One word sums this movie up perfectly--fraud. If it were just a work of fiction, fine. But instead it tries to dupe the audience into thinking it's real by claiming it's based on true events.

Valley of Elah
a slow and twisting plot line. excellent acting. original story. no real surprises, but the actors work very well together and the movie reveals itself. too intense for children, but a great movie with very little real war footage.

The movie of Jones
In the first place, the camera should not have left Jones. Superb performance as usual. It is an affecting movie that touches every heart. I strongly recommend this title.