In the Valley of Elah

Hank Deerfield, a retired military police sergeant, learns that his son, just back from Iraq, has gone missing from his unit. The army is not interested and the local police say it is not their jurisdiction. Hank runs his own investigation and gradually pulls Detective Emily Sanders into it. Damaged video recovered from his son's phone changes everything he thought he knew about what happened in Iraq. Paul Haggis directed. Tommy Lee Jones plays Hank, Charlize Theron plays Detective Sanders and Susan Sarandon plays his wife. Roger Deakins shot it and Mark Isham wrote the score. The title refers to the Valley of Elah in the Bible, where David faced Goliath. The source is a real case: Mark Boal's 2004 Playboy article Death and Dishonor and the murder of the Iraq veteran Richard T. Davis. Names and places were changed. The real victim's father, Lanny Davis, himself a former military policeman, called it a strong and good film that was going to make a lot of people think. Tommy Lee Jones was nominated for Best Actor at the 80th Academy Awards. Time ranked it eighth among the best films of 2007. Rotten Tomatoes sits at 74 percent. It took 29.5 million dollars against a 23 million budget. Who it is for: viewers who like slow investigative drama and Tommy Lee Jones playing a man who says little. Who it is not for: anyone wanting a light touch with a message. The common complaint in the reviews is that Haggis underlines it too heavily in the final scene.