- Is Paul Haggis capable of making a subtle film? I’m beginning to doubt this. There’s this scene at the start of the film where Tommy Lee Jones is driving past a school and sees that the American flag is flying upside down. He takes offense, obviously, and explains to the groundskeeper (or whoever) that flying the flag in this manner is literally a cry for help. By the end of the film, after he’s become so disillusioned with the state of things — the military, the path to justice, the war in general — he takes the flag his son sent him to the school and runs it up the flag pole… upside down. This is a Message, loud and clear and courtesy of Paul Haggis. Just… yeah. Not that I doubted it for a second, but thank you for confirming that this was indeed a “you can still be patriotic and question your government, fuckers” type of film.
- I won’t even get into the David and Goliath analogy that spawns the film’s title.
- There are a lot of strip clubs and topless bars in that town. I know there’s a military base nearby, but come on.
- Charlize Theron was pretty good. I like that she got to spend half the film with two black eyes and a bandaid on her nose.
- One of my favourite things in movies involving dismemberment is the eventual revelation that one of the people responsible for the dismemberment previously worked as a butcher or butcher’s assistant.
- James Franco kind of had a non-role in this movie. Actually, there were a lot of people that I recognized from other things who showed up in bit parts in this movie. Don’t think I ever need to see Frances Fisher’s boobs again, though.
- These Iraq films are really flying fast now, aren’t they? There was a lot of PTSD-type issues bubbling up in the young soldiers as well as a minor subplot about a guy fresh from Iraq who kills first his dog and then his wife, after the wife went to the police and claimed about how the VA wasn’t taking his mental situation seriously. I know there have been a lot of problems with how Vietnam vets were treated upon returning stateside and I wonder to what degree they’re trying to integrate some of these issues into films like this as a way of confronting the problem in popular media so that the average layperson might have a better idea of what people go through. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think this movie really gives a terribly huge insight into the psyche of emotionally immature kids sent to fight in the desert for eighteen months at a time, but it tries to scratch the surface a bit, which is better than nothing.
- I wonder if what we need are more films about actually being there and fewer films about people talking about people they know being there. I feel like we’re still waiting for our Platoon or Full Metal Jacket, although granted both those films came over ten years after the end of the Vietnam War. Maybe some distancing is needed.
In The Valley of Elah
Is Paul Haggis capable of making a subtle film?
IMDB Plot Synopsis A retired military investigator works with a police detective to uncover the truth behind his son's disappearance following his return from a tour of duty in Iraq.