In the Valley of Elah.

Picking up from the Venice entry, "Paul Haggis's In the Valley of Elah is vital in spite of its mustiness," writes David Edelstein in New York. "As a narrative, it's clunky. As a whodunit, it's third-rate. As the drama of a closed-off man's awakening, it's predictable. But Haggis has got hold of a fiercely urgent subject: the moral devastation of American soldiers serving in (and coming home from) Iraq. At its heart are deeper mysteries - and a tragedy that reaches far beyond anything onscreen."

It's a "a mostly inoffensive detective film that's also a confused prestige picture about American soldiers fighting in Iraq," writes Chris Wisniewski for indieWIRE. "Haggis's film charts Hank's journey from certainty to uncertainty and from conviction to confusion, and [Tommy Lee] Jones, delivering one of his finest performances, almost makes Haggis's improbably telegraphed transformation believable."

Updated through 9/14.

"A synthesis of A Few Good Men and Norma Rae, In the Valley of Elah plays out as a calculated attempt to appeal to jockboy political science majors and the Daughters of the American Revolution," writes Ed Gonzalez at Slant. "If that sounds like a nightmare, it mostly is, but when Haggis casts his sights on Emily Sanders ([Charlize] Theron), the film is almost tolerable, even as it stirs up bad memories of Theron's self-righteous Joan of Arc routine from North Country."

"There are a lot of actors showing up in multiple films at Toronto, but Tommy Lee Jones stands apart with his performances in Paul Haggis's In the Valley of Elah and the Coen Bros adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's No Country For Old Men," blogs Sean Axmaker for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. "It's not just the accomplishment of his performances, but the backbone of strength and integrity he provides each film."

"It's a vital American story, and a rare assumption of responsibility for what we ask our soldiers to do, how we ignore them when they can't, and what happens next," writes Ella Taylor in the Voice.

"My main problem with Elah is the same problem I have with the films Haggis has written for Clint Eastwood: they feel too 'writerly,'" writes Noel Murray at the AV Club.

"[H]e may be the most polarizing filmmaker since Michael Moore." Aaron Hillis talks with Haggis for IFC News.

Updates, 9/14: "In the Valley of Elah is Haggis's attempt to weigh in on the second Iraq war, and weigh it does; it weighs and it weighs and in the final frames finally cuts loose positively revels in the weight of its own weightiness," writes Michelle Orange a the Reeler. "Elah is so heavy, in fact, that Haggis seems to have deemed simple properties of good narrative and efficient filmmaking beside the point. The weight is the point; just ask your ass as you finally dislodge it from under two-plus hours of leaden portent."

"[C]onsidered strictly as a crime drama, In the Valley of Elah is a bit pedestrian, with a few too many set pieces, extraneous subplots and predictable turns," writes AO Scott in the New York Times. "At heart it is a somber ballad about young men who remain lost in a dangerous, confusing place even after they come home."

"In the Valley of Elah is designed to stress us out only so much: Instead of sending us home thinking about things in a way we never did before, it only meets - barely - the milder requirement of confirming things we already know," writes Salon's Stephanie Zacharek. "Even that would be OK if the movie worked adequately on dramatic terms."

"This central story packs an undeniable punch, but the film's plodding, overstated style comes off as both needlessly busy - the central mystery feels unnecessarily drawn out, with new clues introduced at strategic intervals - and dumbed-down preachy," writes Andrew Wright in the Stranger. "But then there's Jones, whose resolutely nonlovable performance as a man increasingly adrift does what it can to transform the rampant sentimentality into honest sentiment. He can't single-handedly save this frustrating film from its overly earnest impulses, but when he's onscreen, at least the hokum burns cleaner."

"[T]hough this film in fact does have something crucial to convey, this is not the way to go about it," writes Kenneth Turan. Also in the Los Angeles Times, Gina Piccalo profiles Jake McLaughlin, "a US Army infantryman whose battalion was the first on the ground for the invasion of Baghdad." He plays Specialist Gordon Bonner. "'A lot of people will say, "Oh it's an antiwar film,"' McLaughlin said. 'If anything, it's pro-soldier.'"

"At its best, the film coolly mixes incisive political commentary with a case so engrossing it's tempting to whip out a notepad and jot down clues alongside Hank," writes Stephen Snart in the L Magazine. "At its worst, it stoops to liberal fear-mongering and weary television procedural standbys like the discovery of encrypted cell phone videos that manage to get unscrambled one by one, perfunctorily on cue to introduce plot points."

"Where Crash relentlessly pushed every conflict to a fever pitch, Elah takes its cues from Tommy Lee Jones's low-simmering lead performance as a tradition-bound man who wants very badly to believe the best about his country, its leaders, and his family, in the face of evidence to the contrary," writes Nathan Rabin at the AV Club.

"Haggis, despite the somber self-absorption that basically sinks the film (the final shot is a doozy!), isn't attempting a flower-in-the-rifle-barrel call for peace at any cost," writes Mark Keizer in the LA CityBeat. "Nor is he disrespecting the troops, aligning himself with terrorists, or advocating anti-Americanism. Whether the right wing likes it or not, generals plan the wars, but artists help weave their long-term effects into the cultural fabric."

Online listening tip. Alex Chadwick talks to Haggis for NPR.

Slate's Dana Stevens writes that the film "wants to be the Deer Hunter or Coming Home of the Iraq war, even if it veers at times into the tawdry territory of The General's Daughter. Because of two superb central performances from Tommy Lee Jones and Charlize Theron - and because Haggis's heavy-handed message about the war happens to be true - the film is vividly painful to watch. At times, it's a police procedural, a lurid thriller, and a passionate anti-war manifesto. Needless to say, that's a tough combination to fit together."

"I love the way Tommy Lee Jones acknowledges the change in his son, the changes in the army he faithfully served, the changes in the world we all inhabit," writes Time's Richard Schickel. "It's no more than a fleeting expression, a flicker in his eyes, and the result is not obvious anger or weary cynicism. It is a kind of acceptance that does not vitiate his desire to see justice done. This is, I think, a great performance by one of the great movie minimalists."

Posted by dwhudson at September 12, 2007 6:01 AM