In the valley of Elah

In the Valley of Elah (2007) is a good (not great but good) murder mystery set against the trauma faced by servicemen returning from the Iraq war. The movie's rather heavy handed message that war makes monsters out of ordinary men has been seen before time and time again, so I guess it is up to the actors to raise this drama a little above the average. Tommy Lee Jones plays retired career officer Hank Deerfield, a man that was married to the army of old,Whilst investigating the brutal murder of his soldier son (an Iraq veteran) alongside a downtrodden police detective (the excellent Charlize Theron), Deerfield learns that the rules of war are very different to the ones he was used to in his more idealistic early days.

I think that this film plays the "traumas of war" a little naively.It almost implies that modern war is bad and "traditional" war has in some way a dignity, almost as if torture and unsupervised random acts of violence are only the preserve of this evil middle east conflict and never happened in World War 2. .But having said that, it is only a minor complaint of a competent and adult thriller.8/10