I’ve been finding it intersting that more and more movies are coming out about the war in Iraq. The other day it just dawned on me that in 20 years, this war will be just like Vietnam in that there will be plenty of books, movies, etc out there for people to learn from.
In the same way that Lions for Lambs seemed so lame compared to Charlie Wilson’s War, I think Robert Redford’s film once again pales in comparison to In the Valley of Elah. The first pair goes together because they both deal with war in Afghanistan. The second pair also makes sense because they both deal with the current “War on Terror” or “War of Terror” as Borat puts it.
This film deals with a soldier that has just returned from home, but turns up missing. Tommy Lee Jones, plays the boy’s father, is trying to figure out what happened to his son. Being a veteran, and a bit of an investigator himself, Hank Deerfield isn’t satisfied with the lackluster efforts and figuring out just what happened to his son. Through trial and tribulation, Hank finally gets Detective Sanders, Charlize Theron, to take a real look at the case and try to piece all the parts together. In the meantime, Hank is trying to make sense of some of the videos his son had been sending home to him from the battlefield.
This is truly a sad and tragic story, but I feel that it gave me a little peak into what some of these people are going through. Every once in a while I catch a blip on the news about what’s going on in that region of the world. The only real thing that’s actually affecting me are gas prices and the economy tanking. I’m not in the armed forces though, and there’s very little chance of a draft happening again so I’d be really surprised if I ever experienced anything like this first hand.
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