Down in the Valley

Paul Haggis is carving out a name for himself. With an Academy Award in the bag for his screenplay for Crash and an Academy Award nomination for Million Dollar Baby, and the current releases of Casino Royale, Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima under his belt, he's rapidly becoming a Holywood heavyweight.

In The Valley of Elah is his directorial follow up to Crash and is a strong critique of the War in Iraq. However, the film focuses more on the effects of those soldiers returning from war and the effect on their families rather than the political machinations of those who set the wheels of battle turning in the first place. Elah is an honest attempt to get to grips with the horrifying reality that is war; how it goes on affecting people long after the initial battles have been forgotten.

Returning from a tour in Iraq, Mike Deerfield (Tucker) goes missing and is reported AWOL. When his father, Hank Deerfield (a grizzled, craggy faced Jones), a former military MP and his wife (Sarandon) receive the news, Hank quickly sets out to find his son. As things start to turn ugly, Hank enlists the help of Emily Sanders (Theron), who reluctantly helps him search for his lost boy. Before long, his search turns into a murder investigation as his son's dismembered and charred remains are found in the desert.

Taken at face value, Elah could be seen as an extended episode of any TV crime drama you'd care to mention – CSI or Law and Order; suspicions alight on everyone in the film, from drug dealers to military personnel but it's the underlying subtext which makes it more than just a run of the mill crime drama.

Hank's investigation into his son's killer is as much about him discovering who his son was in the first place as it is about the motives for his son's murder. This is revealed through a series of photos that Mike sent his dad before he died, and some footage that Hank manages to decode from Mike's phone.

As a man who does everything by the book, who shines his shoes every night and says grace before every meal, Hank has a clear sense of duty and purpose and a concrete idea of what is right and what is wrong, so it's this upheaval of what he firmly believes to be good and right that truly offends his sensibilities.