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Film · Warner Independent · 2007

In the Valley of Elah

Name: In the Valley of Elah scores 68 — Live Historic
Item: In the Valley of Elah
Rating: 68
Author: Live Historic

68Worth an evening.

A father and a flag he has to cut apart to see the pictures. Adults. Keep it.

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The review

Hank Deerfield is a Vietnam veteran and a military policeman. His boy Mike has come back from Iraq and gone missing. The film follows a father through a motel, a base, and a police detective who has her own reasons not to trust a uniform. What he finds is not a conspiracy large enough to be a thriller. It is a small, ugly thing that the war made ordinary.

Do not hand this to a child. The images on the phone are the point, and they are not for a dare. Watch it if you have told yourself that a son comes home the same man who left, only prouder. The film is the correction. Then sit with the last shot long enough to say what you think a flag is for when the story under it is this one.

Journal

Keep In the Valley of Elah in the record.

No house has filed a sentence for this yet.

Live Historic number 68. Yours can differ.

The glance

Piety is the thin one.

Can conscience actually stop someone, or is reverence only in the shot so it can be mocked?

This phone is set for a grown person, just me. Change the ages.

Consider this

Taking Chance

81 instead of 68

Taking Chance is still a war film, and it scores 81 instead of 68. What you gain is piety: He prays, and the towns along the way treat the body as something owed.

The eight

7
Industry
He still works a case the way he was trained, which is the only competence he has left.
8
Household
The whole film is a father who did not know the man who came home.
4
Piety
The title is the old story of a boy with a sling. The film does not pretend this father is David.
6
Courage
He will not stop. That stubbornness is courage and it is also too late.
7
Republic
A police department and an Army post would both like the death to be a smaller story.
6
Temperance
The violence is offscreen and then it isn't. The film does not decorate it.
9
Truth
The phone videos are the truth the institution will not say first.
7
Stewardship
The flag at the end is not a comfort. It is what a father does when the story is too ruined to fly whole.

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Live Historic · In the Valley of Elah · 68IMDb tt0478134

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Film · MGM · 1949

Battleground

68Worth an evening.

A squad in the snow, nobody famous, and it felt closer to the war than the speeches.

Pass it on

The review

Snow, a replacement, and a man who wants to go home. That is the size of the story. The Battle of the Bulge, from a squad. The work is staying in a line. The heroes are not famous. It was made soon after the war by people who knew the cold. Older teens. Leave the wounds alone.

I recognized the fellow who wants his own kitchen more than he wants to be brave. The film does not mock him, and it does not let that want dissolve the line. Nobody rides in from headquarters to be the point. Plenty of war pictures need a great man. This one leaves the cold, the squad, and the plain fact that going home was the thing they might miss.

Journal

Keep Battleground in the record.

No house has filed a sentence for this yet.

Live Historic number 68. Yours can differ.

The glance

Household is the thin one.

Is a marriage, a parent, or a child a real life here, or just a prop?

This phone is set for a grown person, just me. Change the ages.

Consider this

The Best Years of Our Lives

76 instead of 68

The Best Years of Our Lives is still a war film, and it scores 76 instead of 68. What you gain is household: The banker's children have grown, and the bombardier's wife is now a stranger.