In The Valley Of Elah [2008]

Product Details

Director : Paul Haggis
Actor : Charlize Theron, Tommy Lee Jones, Susan Sarandon, Josh Brolin, James Franco
Format : PAL
Aspect Ratio : 2.40:1
Binding : DVD
EAN : 5055201802507
Product Group : DVD
Region Code : 2
Release Date : 2008-05-26
Running Time : 121minutes
Studio : Optimum Home Entertainment

ASIN : B0012XQJ9U

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.co.uk Review

Notch up another great role for Tommy Lee Jones here, as his starring performance in the lead of In The Valley Of Elah is a further acting performance of real merit. And this from the man who has already recently added the equally excellent No Country For Old Men to his CV.

In The Valley Of Elah, however, is a very different beast. It’s the new film from writer/director Paul Haggis, he who previously brought us Oscar-winner Crash, and Jones stars as Hank Deerfield, a man who decides to take matters into his own hands when he finds out that his son has disappeared. However, what complicates matters is that Deerfield’s son is a soldier on leave, and the military are proving to be little help in getting to the bottom of the mystery.

Yet there’s far more to In The Valley Of Elah than that, even though its narrative is interesting and surprising. No, there are real layers of drama here, and none more obvious than those surrounding Jones’ character (the lead actor, incidentally, snagged a richly-deserved Oscar nomination for his work here). He’s an understated, yet brilliant, creation, and one quite wonderfully brought to life. In conjunction with Susan Sarandon as his wife, and Charlize Theron as the detective he enlists the help of, In The Valley Of Elah emerges as one of the most unfairly overlooked films of recent times, and one that’s ripe for discovery on DVD. A superb piece of work. --Jon Foster

DVD Description

Synopsis

"Your son is missing." It’s the phone call every soldier’s father dreads. What Hank Deerfield (Tommy Lee Jones) had never thought to fear was that this call would come when his son was home in the U.S., on leave from service in Baghdad. Facing military indifference to the disappearance, Hank decides to take matters into his own hands and discover the truth about what’s happened to his son. With the reluctant help of police detective Emily Sanders (Charlize Theron), Hank embarks on a journey that will bring him up against the closed ranks of the armed forces and the harsh realities of modern warfare.

Written and directed by Academy Award ®- winner Paul Haggis and starring three Academy Award ®-winning actors – Tommy Lee Jones, Charlize Theron and Susan Sarandon – alongside James Franco, Josh Brolin and Jason Patric, In the Valley of Elah is the powerful story of one father’s search for the truth.

Extras Featurette: After Iraq Featurette: Coming Home Interview With Paul Haggis Additional Scenes TRAILER

Synopsis

Tommy Lee Jones plays Hank Deerfield, a retired military man investigating the mysterious disappearance of his soldier son, Mike, in this sombre mystery-drama from director Paul Haggis (CRASH). Charlize Theron is the civilian homicide cop in the small town near the base where Mike recently returned from a term of combat in Iraq. When this unlikely pair ends up investigating the mystery together, they encounter some suspicious covering-up from the army. Deerfield gets access to his son’s camera phone which contains startling video footage from combat overseas.

Using a muted palette of military browns and greens, Haggis shows the same sharp eye for humanistic detail that served him so well in CRASH, infusing desolate scenes of civilian life--sterile concrete barracks, sleazy strip clubs, homey but empty diners, drugs, fast food joints, and ghostly motels--with vivid detail. Performances are all Oscar-worthy: Jones's craggy, weather-beaten face hiding grief and anguish beneath a steely facade until they threatens to boil over. His mug becomes a symbol for an America with no other choice but to confront its own grave flaws if it's ever to find any answers. Susan Sarandon bring the pain to the surface as the anguished mother waiting at home, and Theron is strong and sure, as a single mother who bravely faces, among other challenges, harassment in the workplace. Josh Brolin is her ex, the chief of police, and Jason Patric and James Franco are among the impassive faces of the military.

Customer Reviews

"a real grown up movie" (2008-08-09)

There are plenty of reviews regarding this fabulous film so I'll keep it short. Proof that real grown up movies are still made in the west. Tommy Lee Jones and Charlize Theron are superb. Buy it!!

Excellent. Bleak, but excellent (2008-07-21)

So first off, ignore the cover. Tommy Lee Jones with the torch and Charlize Theron with her gun drawn underneath the words AN INTENSE THRILLER rather implies a lot of chases, gunplay and other shenanigans. Without giving anything away, there is one chase. Charlize Theron does have a gun and TLJ a torch (although I'm not sure if he ever turns it on). But I'm already getting distracted.As you can see from the other reviews, TLJ plays a retired solider, who is told that his son has gone missing, shortly after returning from Iraq. He then spends the rest of the film single mindedly battling to find out what happened to him, with no help from the Army. After initial reluctance, he is helped by Charlize Theron and they piece together what happened.But that's rather incidental. The film is quiet and sober, but also angry about Iraq. About what we are doing to it, but even more so about what it is doing to our young men. And, in turn, to the rest of us. It's about a father who has already lost one son and can't bear the prospect of losing another.The cast are uniformly excellent, and this is well worth a watch. It is very bleak, be warned, but highly recommended.

A pleasant surprise (2008-07-18)

The 2007 film written and directed by Paul Haggis, starring Tommy Lee Jones, Charlize Theron, and Susan Sarandon was an unexpected treat to good acting, tension and resoultion. How good films should be made! Tommy Lee Jones is superb and every wrinkle of his faces betrays volumes of emotions that want to shout out over the needless loss of a son.In The Valley of Elah is based on actual events. The plot explores themes of the Iraq war, abuse of prisoners and PTSD following active combat. The film portrays a father's hunt for his son's killers. Here is where the Biblical allusion starts. The Valley of Elah was the location of the battle between David and Goliath in the war between the Philistines and Israelis - a clue to the real subject of the film. IT reinforces an important lesson in a society which is largely demilitarised: war changes people, and can often deform or reform them. What carries the film's tension is the confrontational atmosphere.The ending is though is a let-down - suddenly a solution through a confession is presented. What lacks is that we never get inside the heads of those who commit the murder. It would be important to understand the way that the soldiers are changed by their experiences. Not enough is shown of what propels people into the army. We never understand these young men's earlier lives - hence we don't know to what extent what they become now has already been innate.One of the film's aims is to bring America itself to its own valley of Elah - its own confrontation with what it has done to its young men.

a sledgehammer message (2008-07-09)

It has to be said that in recent years Tommy Lee Jones has wracked up some superb roles, both supporting and lead, and in his old age is maturing rather like a fine wine (if you want proof of this, watch his roles in Three Burials of Melquiados Estrada, and his great supporting turn in No Country for Old Men). It is good to see this string of quietly played, meaty roles continuing with In the Valley of Elah (the titles by the way refers to the valley were David fought Goliath, an apt and not very subtle metaphor for this film). Jones plays Hank Deerfield, a lifelong soldier and retired Military Policeman, who receives the news that his son is missing. However, like his father and his older (and now deceased) brother, Deerfield junior is a soldier, recently returned from duty in Iraq, and the military are not that keen to help Hank in his quest to find his son. The discovery of a burnt and mutilated corpse leads things down a darker path, and it is only through the help of a local police officer (Charlize Theron, in her meatiest and most understated role since Monster) that Hank begins to discover the truth. Any film dealing with the emotional fallout of the war in Iraq and the effect that this situation has on a country's young fighting men was always going to be a difficult sell, and unfortunately, director Paul Haggis (previously best known for his multi-Oscar winner Crash) is not the subtlest of directors, rather slamming the point home that war is hell but coming home can sometimes be worse, rather than allowing the viewer to reach this conclusion on their own (now you see the obviousness of the David and Goliath metaphor). This is not a bad film by any means, with Jones giving another (Oscar nominated) performance, and featuring some superb support from Theron, as well as Jason Patric as a military investigator trying to ensure that the military come out of this looking if not good then not bad either, and a great but rather small role for Susan Sarandon as Hanks wife. The film also has some rather good points to say about being a parent and the nature of grief amidst all the talk of war, but unfortunately the sledgehammer message rather obliterates these more subtle points. A very good attempt to explain not what war is, but rather what it can do to people, turning the healthy into casualties just as surely as the wounded and the dead, but not the unqualified success it should have been.

Just average - I expected more (2008-07-04)

I have just watched this movie. I had been waiting eagerly for a few months for the release of the DVD and I have to say I was a bit disappointed. I thought the acting from all the leads was excellent but the story was deprressing - obviously the subject matter wasn't going to be one of laughs but even so, I thought it may have been a bit more uplifting. Very slow and quite boring up to half way through. At least I rented the DVD and didn't pay full price at the cinema. Shame - could have been better in my opinion.

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