In the Valley of Elah (2007)

Yes, I remember strongly disliking Crash the one and only time I saw it in the theater back in the summer of ’05. I still expected good things from this, because from what I had gathered, Tommy Lee Jones took up about 95% of the screen time.

Tommy Lee Jones plays Hank Deerfield (this name fits perfectly for some reason I can’t explain), a man with the austerity of a monk. He is also severely patriotic: upon seeing the American flag inexplicably hanging upside-down when driving past an elementary school, he stops his truck. Cut to: Hank watching a Hispanic custodian bringing the flag down to right it and when part of the flag briefly rests on the concrete, Hank says, “Never let it touch the ground.” Whoa. He explains to the custodian what an upside-down flag means, and goes on his way.

Hank is an ex-Sergeant himself, both of his sons are in the military as well (we find out that the older boy was killed when his helicopter was shot down) and he has just received a phone call informing him that his last surviving son, Mike, has gone missing from his base shortly after returning from a tour of duty in Iraq. He packs a suitcase and drives to his son’s base, and asks to see his quarters, where he meets some of his son’s bunkmates and fellow soldiers. Haggis is able to convey a sense of military omertà among these young men deftly - Hank is not going to find much here, except dubious condolences, and before long, he gets a knock on his motel room door from a marine in a beret. Hank tells him to wait a moment while he uses the bathroom. When Hank steps out, he is greeted by an eerie, striking image: the soldier in the beret is standing at attention, saluting, in the doorway, with the door still wide open, the daylight flooding into the room, shadowing the soldier so that he appears to be a saluting spectre. Hank pauses to process the oddness of what he is seeing, and then returns the salute, at which point, he is informed that his son, Mike, has been found.

This film is inspired by the real story of Richard Davis, a soldier who disappeared in the summer of 2003 after returning from a tour in Iraq. The young man’s father, Lanny Davis, a retired veteran, began his own investigation, and it was later revealed that Davis was murdered by four other soldiers who served with him in his tour of duty, his brothers-in-arms, his comrades. Reading about the night of Davis’s murder offers as little motivation for the killing (he was stabbed 33 times) as the film does, other than explaining that his buddies were drunk, pissed off at him, and were suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. The film keeps all these details, but increases the number of stab wounds to 42. Needless to say, I was almost as upset to hear that number as Hank was, when sparing himself no mercy he demands to hear every detail from the medical examiner.

Tommy Lee Jones is fascinating to watch in this, and his performance really deserves to be in a great movie. It is obvious from the film’s somberness and overbearing dirge-choir that Haggis thinks his film is Important, and though I admire much of it, it basically becomes a pretty standard Murder Investigation in the Military Film. This might be a legitimate sub-genre of the Police Procedural, but Haggis’s film hasn’t transcended its peers, A Few Good Men and Courage Under Fire, though it labors under the delusion that it has because it covers a current topic. Is it relevant? Yes. Is it a film worth watching? Yes. It has some fine moments, such as when a Detective (Charlize Theron) invites Hank over for dinner in order to share some information about the case with him. Theron’s character is a single-mother of a 9 or 10 year old boy, who likes to have his bedroom door left ajar after lights out.

Hank is asked to read him a bedtime story, but because he can’t make sense of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Hank tells the boy a story from the Old Testament: David and Goliath. This Bible story is where the film’s title comes from.

After telling the boy the story and a comically terse “goodnight,” he closes the boy’s bedroom door, leaving him in the pitch darkness. I was waiting for Theron’s son to cry out “Door!” like he did earlier when she did the same thing, but he doesn’t. Hank walks past Theron who tells him that her son likes the door ajar, and Hank informs her, “He’ll be okay.” Seconds later, the boy cries out “Door!” and Theron opens it a bit, and the boy tells her to close it more than usual, but still leaving it a bit open. We see the vertical rectangle of light on the boy narrow until just some of his face is lit. This is a perfect and not openly acknowledged symbol of Hank’s, and to a larger extent, the Military's, deluded attitude about thrusting young men into war: sure, they are men and men are tough, so they’ll be okay, right? No, no they won’t.


Grade: B-

Grand Canyon (1991)

Is it possible to be too likeable? If it is, then I’m going to say that Kevin Kline is disgustingly likeable, which is to say I think he is wonderful. Especially in Grand Canyon, a film which must be admired for not only its almost uniform likeability, but its ambition: it’s gonna cover the Big Issues! Existential Meditation – yeah, that’s the ticket!

It was scripted by Lawrence Kasdan, who also directed, and it’s clear, whether he wanted it to be or not, that he is a good-hearted individual, despite instances of gang-violence, urban decay, infidelity, and mid-life crises. The film’s sense of humor is what tips you off immediately – it’s warm, like its characters, who are mostly, well, very, extremely likeable. Danny Glover as Simon, during a blind date with Alfre Woodard fumbles and is unsure of himself, and the two are obviously mutually impressed, yet Glover’s awkwardness is delightful – he escorts her to his yellow car, “Well, there’s my car. It’s…yellow. (A beat) Of course it’s yellow, what am I saying?” Alfre Woodard finds it just as adorable as I did. It’s been a while since a scene has made me smile so hard.


Danny Glover plays Simon, a tow-truck driver who saves Kevin Kline’s character, Mack, when his car breaks down in a rather urban part of Los Angeles. Kline is in the process of being menaced and humiliated by five shameless black thugs who know an uptight whiteboy lost in the ghetto when they see one. This scene takes place within the first five minutes of the film and immediately hooked me, an uptight whiteboy, as I was scared shitless for Mack. Simon pulls up, like a guardian angel, and defuses the situation in a brilliant exchange with the head thug (the one who’s “strapped” as Simon’s nephew, Otis, would say). I would describe the scene further, but it is a wonder to discover for yourself, this brief dialogue between Simon and Ghetto Hood #1, that basically defines a whole subcultures’ ugly dilemma with a short, tense conversation.

The film is not so succinct, as a whole, however, and has many different subplots and auxiliary characters, none of which are bothersome, but add an unnecessary girth to the momentum of the story. I’m speaking of Mack and his wife, Claires' son, Roberto (a young Jeremy Sisto) whose role seems rather minor compared to the others. I grew impatient with his scenes at Summer Camp. He has a scene where he learns how to drive with his father that is compelling, but the scenes involving him consoling a bullied boy at the camp, and his girlfriend, and his girlfriend’s parents introducing themselves to Claire all could’ve been removed without taking much from the film. Claire (Mary McDonnell) and her discovery of an abandoned infant wailing in the foliage when she’s out jogging struck me as particularly false. In a story like this, contrivances are requisite in order to establish the threadwork that ties all these disparate stories together, but this particular plot point was such a clumsy device – unsatisfied older woman facing Empty Nest Syndrome miraculously stumbles upon Hope wriggling in a bundle in the brush – that I often found Mary McDonnell’s entire character to be a weak spot. Sure, the film makes her say to Mack that it was “a miracle,” just like the curious moment when an absent-minded Mack was yanked back by a total stranger from stepping in front of a speeding bus. However, Mack’s character had an interesting story given to him, so anything involving him, I was much less inclined to grow tired with. The baby in the brush seems like a rather transparent script construct conceived (literally) to give an unassigned character something to do, much like Roberto and his Summer Camp romance, and to a lesser extent Mack’s secretary (and one-night stand), Dee (a 27-year-old Mary-Louise Parker) and her troubles. Though I must credit Kasdan for not forcing any melodrama involving Dee threatening to tell Mack’s wife, blah, blah, etc. Otis’s story also was not fundamental to the success of the film.

Like I said, though – the film is a success, and despite sometimes overstating themes about man’s smallness in the indifferent face of a natural behemoth like the Grand Canyon, there is a lot of wisdom about the way human beings struggle and persevere in the face of chaos and hardship. Mack, troubled why class and racial differences impose barriers between him and Simon becoming friends, seeks Simon out weeks later, after a bizarre and revelatory dream, and asks if he can buy him breakfast, one likeable all-around decent guy to another. Over breakfast, Simon tells Mack about his father’s worn, beat-up face:

Simon: When I used to look at that face, and see all the pain there, all the things he lost, all the hurt he had, I wondered why he wanted to go on, why he just didn’t lay down and give it up.

Mack: Did you figure it out?

Simon: No. Never figured out much about that guy. I asked him though.

Mack: What did he say?

Simon: Habit.

The strangest character in the film is Davis (played by Steve Martin), a rich movie producer and friend of Mack and Claire. In a funny scene, we see him viewing the fruits of his labors (well his money) when watching a satirically gruesome scene of trigger-happy killers screaming obscenities and shooting passengers on a bus they have hijacked. Davis smiles at the unfortunate mayhem, and when there’s no “money shot” he gets up, turns around, and yells at the director, “Where’s the brain matter?! Where’s the viscera?!” He is later shot in the thigh in an abrupt car-jacking and after getting out of the hospital, tells Claire and others that he has had an epiphany – no more movies with explosions, no more glorification of violence, no more ugliness. Of course, by the end of the film, when Mack commends him on his change of heart, Davis asks, “What? Oh that! Fuck that.” This is followed by one of the best scenes in the film - as Mack drives Davis around the back lot of Davis’s studio in an upscale golf-cart, Davis explains why movies about violence need to be made:

“The point is…there’s a gulf in this country, an ever-widening abyss, between the people who have stuff and the people who don’t have shit. It’s like this big hole has opened up in the ground, as big as the fucking Grand Canyon, and what’s come out of this big hole is an eruption of rage and the rage creates violence and the violence is real, Mack. Nothing’s gonna make it go away, until someone changes something, which is not going to happen. And you may not like it, even I may not like it, but I can’t pretend it isn’t there because that is a lie, and when art lies, it becomes worthless. So I gotta keep telling the truth…even if it means some motherfucker can blow a big hole in my leg…and I’m gonna walk with a fucking limp for the rest of my life and call myself lucky.”

The reason I like this scene so much is that it’s unclear how Kasdan wants us to feel about this speech. Should we think it’s a crock of deluded bullshit (which it certainly seems like)? Or is there some truth to what Davis is yammering about? After Davis says all that, he hobbles out of the golf-cart and asks Mack if he’s seen Sullivan’s Travels. When Mack says he hasn’t, Davis says, “It’s a story about a guy, he’s a filmmaker like me, who loses his way, and forgets what it was he was put on earth to do. Fortunately, he finds his way back. It can happen, Mack. Check it out.”

Grade: B

Hard Candy (2005)

Warning: Do not read unless you have seen Hard Candy.

A computer screen: Lensman 319 chats, Instant Messenger style, with Thonggrrrrl14 and does not flirt so much as write cringe-inducing sexual overtures. Thongrrrrl agrees to meet him: cut to portentous black – I was hooked. They meet in a coffee/pastry shop and we meet Hayley (Ellen Page), 14, ostensibly all wide-eyed innocence and seeming very susceptible at first, as Jeff (Patrick Wilson) wipes cake-cream residue off her bottom lip with his thumb and forefinger clenching her chin suggestively at the same time, immediately establishing his sexual dominance.

They talk in the coffee shop and he realizes she is no ordinary girl: she is, at first charming, then troubling, in her precocious ness. They go back to his place, and my disgust with Jeff turned into sympathy and my sympathy for Hayley turned into disgust, as she quickly establishes her intellectual dominance with her smug dismissive analysis of his personal belongings, and he struggles to keep up while remaining cool despite his rapidly deteriorating superiority. He offers her a Screwdriver, but she reminds him of the foolishness of accepting a drink from a stranger, especially when the mixing of the drink was out of sight. She says she’ll make the drinks, and when she brings his to him, he drinks and before long, he is disoriented and has lost consciousness.

He awakens to a gloating Hayley and tied to a swivel chair. The rest of the film is Hayley gloating and torturing him, physically and psychologically, while Jeff earns the audiences’ sympathy more and more with each panicked plea for mercy. His crime: being a pedophile that preys on underage girls on the Internet. In theory, this is an interesting role reversal, but as executed by the cocky, abrasive Ellen Page and the likeable Patrick Wilson, there is very little swinging of sympathies as the director and writer expect. From the moment Jeff finds himself tied to the chair, my sympathies were never with Hayley as her idea of justice is vindictive cruelty. So any elevated display of biting social commentary on the parts of the filmmaker devolves into pointless sadism and moderately compelling cat-and-mouse games ending with an ineffective climactic confrontation between Jeff and Hayley atop the afternoon-sun-soaked rooftop of Jeff’s house. An idealized ex-girlfriend of Jeff’s is used as a weak motivation for Jeff’s acceptance of Hayley’s offer to hang himself with a noose she had tied on his roof earlier. Hayley walks away from Jeff’s home, victorious in ridding the world of a single Internet predator, but proving absolutely nothing, except that individuals that torture scumbags are just as guilty of torture as scumbags who torture innocents.


Grade: D+