Review of In the Valley of Elah (2007) by Zach H — 05 May 2009

A great movie from a great director. It does get off to a slow start, but it is a very good movie about some of the darker sides of the Iraq war. Yes, there were one or two very small plot holes, mainly the one that some of the other reviewers have mentioned about the incident with the car and the picture of the bus in Iraq, but they are very small and tough to notice.

There are a few great points that Paul Haggis tries to make subtly throughout the movie, though some of them are actually not so subtle, such as the one with the upside-down flag. This movie tells us a story of a man and his wife trying to figure out their son's disappearance and death, and in the process gives us a picture of how the families of soldiers get by, how the soldiers themselves get by in Iraq, and what happens to them once they have come home.

In the end, this picture makes us think that a society that is ready to go into war, ready to send thousands of its young men to their deaths, is beyond saving itself.