In the valley of elah

War, atrocity, psychological turmoil: subjects such as these have long been indulged through cinematic rumination. In particular, the Vietnam sub-genre has led to more than a few cutting examinations of mental debilitation triggered by foreign soil and a landscape of inhumanity.

So although Paul Haggis' (Crash) latest film, In the Valley of Elah, is unsettling because of its political immediacy-the war in Iraq-the subject matter is far from unfamiliar.

We've seen it in Full Metal Jacket, in Platoon, in "the horror, the horror" of Apocalypse Now. The psychological affliction of the American soldier in times of war is, in each instance, pitiable and terrifying, powerful but remote. In each instance, we find ourselves faced with human fallibility, allowed only to watch and recoil as our men in uniform falter at the brink of sanity and ferity.

In the Valley of Elah taps into these horrors from a domestic distance, its morose landscape sterilized behind a cold blue veneer. The story centers on small town laborer and Vietnam vet Hank Deerfield (Tommy Lee Jones). Hank receives word that his son Mike, recently returned from an eighteen-month deployment to Iraq, is missing. Mike's fellow unit members are polite but clueless. Mike's room is neat- its contents untouched.

When the charred remains of Mike's stabbed and decapitated body are found in a field, Deerfield's military prowess returns, leading him on a twisting, disjointed journey to find the truth. Hank provokes local detective Emily Sanders (Charlize Theron) into aiding his tortured investigation. Meanwhile, his wife (Susan Sarandon) waits wordlessly on the film's periphery, immobilized at the loss of a second son to war.

As a pathos-driven critique, Elah hits all the necessary emotional points. As a vehicle of engaging us in the mentality of the afflicted, Elah disappoints. As expertly as Jones portrays Hank's agonizing restraint, glimpses into Mike's Iraqi stint, viewed via barely discernible camera-phone recordings, leave the audience unsure how to absorb the unfathomable truth.

We've spent tens of years and miles of film attempting to penetrate the devastatingly foreign landscape of Vietnam. Elah, it seems, is only a precursor to the growing effort to engage an old horror in a new landscape.