In the Valley of Elah 09/28/07

This will probably be the first of many movies I see about the Iraq war. and that's pretty significant because the war is still going on. They waited five years after Vietnam ended before they made The Deer Hunter and Apocalypse Now. The first movies about WWII that didn't include bullshit John Wayne viewpoints happened decades afterward. But here we are with 'The Valley of Elah' a movie about returning veterans from Iraq that has been released in the midst of the war itself. Is this a good thing or bad thing? I don't know. Probably a good thing. It keeps people aware of what's going on right now, it'll maybe even keep them interested.
But there will proabably be better movies than this that will talk about the same issue and be about the same things. There was something about this film that simply put, was boring. It simply expected to much from me. Let me put it this way, a soldier goes missing and dies. But why should I feel sympathy, I know nothing about this kid. I've never met him and not until the last ten minutes do I even see him or hear him talk in any coherent way. I don't feel sympathy for the guy, and I have a hard time of relating to the mother and father when they lose him. I feel for them on a universal level. They've lost their son. But I don't feel for them personally, and when there are these long slow scenes when people cry I feel disconnected and removed. I'm bored.
The good part of the movie is that it somewhat works as a detective story and Tommy Lee Jones and Charlize Theron provide solid work as they try to solve the case. Theron in paticular is fantastic, I wish the movie would have been more about her. We get a glimpse into her life and I wish I had seen more of it. There is a paticularly good scene when Tommy Lee Jones tells her son a bedtime story about the fight between David and Goliath in the Valley of Elah. It's fantastic hearing the old grizzled man talk about bravery to a seven year old. Good times. Still I can't quite recommend the movie. It's just too emotionally demanding for a subject (the boy) that is so curiously absent.