In the Valley of Elah

When “Hank” (Tommy Lee Jones) gets a call to say that his soldier son “Mike” has gone awol shortly after his return to the USA from Iraq, he sets off to track him down. Initially, he hits a wall of indifference from investigators but then an hacked-up body is discovered and quickly identified as the missing man. Together with police officer “Sanders” (Charlize Theron) - who is, herself, having to prove her worth in a chauvinist department of clods, they decide it’s best to work together on a case that seems to suggest that drugs might be at the bottom of the case and that some of his son’s erstwhile colleagues from the war might know more or even be complicit. Of course “Hank” doesn’t want to believe that his son could be involved in dealing narcotics, but as they begin to piece things together with some spurious clues and conflicting testimony, it looks like that might just be the only solution. The first hour or so of this is quite a potent look at just how war takes away any perception of the value of life. “It’s how we coped” is often used, and plausibly so on many occasions, but as we near the denouement the structures of the story start to fall away and the denouement is distinctly weak - as if the writer hadn’t quite the courage of any convictions necessary to see the thrust of their story through to a more honest conclusion. It just sort of peters out with a denouement that seems to want to make an entirety independent statement about the effects of war that makes decent men less so and bad men more so. There’s too much chatter about who has jurisdiction and the sparing appearances from Susan Sarandon as wife/mother “Joan” can’t really add much more than the desperate mother wondering what her son was doing in the military in the first place, and that of course points a finger squarely at a dad who perhaps demanded too much of his child. It is worth a watch as there is a degree of chemistry between Jones and Theron but there’s simply not enough meat on it’s bones.