In the Valley of Elah

It's funny, because I never noticed it until I became a parent myself—but an awful lot of "serious" movies derive their tension from the specter of harm to children (or their tragedy from actual harm to children). When you think about it, it makes sense; there are few more primal fears upon which screenwriters can play than that our kids will get hurt. Still, I've been surprised at how many of the movies I've been watching for this column have, at one point or another, contained a child in danger as a major plot point.

I can't claim ignorance in the case of In the Valley of Elah, though; Whitney and I knew enough about its plot in advance that she told me to watch it by myself, unable to face a film about parental suffering. (Queue Blocker, anyone?) Having heard good things about its lead performance, I bit the bullet anyway.

In it, Tommy Lee Jones stars as Hank Deerfield, a veteran who receives a call from the U.S. Army informing him that his son, Mike, who has returned recently from Iraq, has gone AWOL. Deerfield quietly packs and drives down to the border-town New Mexico fort where Mike is stationed, telling his wife (Susan Sarandon) that he'll find their son. But after a day or two of fruitless investigation on Deerfield's part, Mike's mutilated and burned corpse is discovered in an empty field. Frustrated at the investigation into the murder, which is complicated by a jurisdictional cold war between local and military police, Deerfield stays on to try to find out what happened to Mike, with the assistance of a sympathetic police detective, Emily Sanders (Charlize Theron).

As the tale becomes darker and darker—Mike may have had involvement in drugs, torture of Iraqi prisoners, and perhaps even worse—Jones is nothing short of breathtaking. The actor has proven himself a master at expressing the emotional state of characters who don't express their emotions, a description that certainly fits Hank Deerfield. But the emotional level here is particularly deep and visceral: It surrounds the loss of a son, plus Deerfield's growing sense that he somehow failed Mike, that he could have prevented this. Jones's most remarkable moments in this film, most of them wordless, are almost unbearably powerful and poignant. In a career of excellent performances, this may be his best.

Which is not to say this is a perfect film by any means. Anytime the focus isn't squarely on Jones, the energy vanishes. The major subplot—single-mom Sanders trying to raise her son while dealing with chauvinist police colleagues who believe she slept her way into her job—feels hackneyed, borrowed from some 10-year-old Ashley Judd movie. Even the solution of the crime feels strangely anticlimactic. It may well be part of director-screenwriter Paul Haggis's point that, in the end, it doesn't really matter why Mike died, that no reason could be satisfactory anyway—but that saps the story of its suspense, leaving us with nothing but Jones's searing presence to anchor the film.

And yet ... that presence is often enough. In the Valley of Elah is a very difficult movie to watch (especially for a parent), and a flawed one to boot. As I said, I'm still glad I did.