In the Valley of Elah

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

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