In the Valley of Elah (Combo HD DVD and Standard DVD) [HD DVD]

In the Valley of Elah (Combo HD DVD and Standard DVD) [HD DVD]
by Paul Haggis

In the Valley of Elah (Combo HD DVD and Standard DVD) [HD DVD]

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DVD details

Actor: Charlize Theron, James Franco, Jason Patric, Susan Sarandon, Tommy Lee Jones
Director: Paul Haggis
Brand: Warner Brothers
DVD: Region Code 0
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Dubbed); Spanish (Dubbed)
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.40:1
Running Time: 121 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2008-03-11
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Warner Home Video

DVD Reviews of In the Valley of Elah (Combo HD DVD and Standard DVD) [HD DVD]

DVD Review: An Important Movie.....
Summary: 5 Stars

I have only a few words to say about "In The Valley of Elah". This is a movie that EVERYONE should watch. Not just for the fact that it is a good movie, but as a reminder of what our men and women are having to go through in the service of our country. Anyone that has a son or daughter or relative that is considering going into the service should highly consider watching this movie with that person before enlisting.

DVD Review: "Dad, you have to get me out of here."
Summary: 4 Stars

It is all written on the faces, the harried father who desperately seeks the whereabouts of his son after a tour in Iraq, the others who served with the young man, their proud military bearing and soft-spoken reverence for authority belied by what they have seen and done in service to their country. In this powerful, haunting tale, the rigors of war fall upon the survivors. Hank Deerfield (Tommy Lee Jones), ex-career military, leaves his home in Tennessee, wife (Susan Sarandon) waiting anxiously behind. Hank's last words: "I'll find him." Setting off in his pickup truck, Hank heads for his Mike Deerfield's military base. There are insufficient answers to ease a troubled father's mind. Hoping to circumvent the military police, Hank requests the help of Detective Emily Sanders, a young woman much derided by her fellow detectives. Resistant to Deerfield's imprecations, Sanders at allows him to accompany her to the scene of a recent crime, the mutilation and burning of an unidentified victim.

Once the victim is identified we come to the heart of the film- the reasons for a brutal slaying that straddles the border of military and civilian jurisdiction. Clinging to his rigorous daily standards, military corners on his motel bed, spit-shining his shoes each night before the terrible revelations of the next day, Deerfield is the contemporary American father, patriotic, hard-working, respectful of the institution that has formed the backbone of his life and that of his family. But everything he believes is challenged by the facts, piece by disheartening piece, all pointing towards an institution overwhelmed by the necessities of an ongoing war and the collateral damage inflicted on those who honor their country's call. Director Haggis is circumspect- at no time does he disrespect the military or the soldiers who serve their nation. But he cuts to the heart of war as etched on the face of one parent who bears the unbearable, the loss of a son in circumstances that baffle and disturb him.

Reviewing snippets of film accessed from his son's cell phone, Deerfield watches his son's reactions to the stresses of war, the moral dilemmas faced daily by soldiers in combat. Returning home, these young men are as tightly coiled as when in Iraq, struggling to integrate in a world that has moved on. As the detective slowly unravels a web of deceit engineered by the army, Deerfield hovers nearby, unable to return home without answers. Those he receives do little to lessen his pain, the internal struggle writ clear on the actor's face, more powerful than the declarations of the guilty, the smooth, untroubled faces of Mike's friends. One laments, "I couldn't wait to get out of Iraq. After two weeks here, I wish I could go back." This portrait of loss is scathing and painful, with no villain to blame, save the grim realities of war in the modern age, when powerful machines of destruction are wielded by the flesh and blood of fallible humans. David slays Goliath in the Valley of Elah, but this is a monster of our own making, the nature of war and its necessary, if inhuman demands. With a superior supporting cast (Charlize Theron, Susan Sarandon, Jason Patrick), Jones stands alone, much like his character, his grief relentless. Luan Gaines/2008.

DVD Review: Valley of Ellah
Summary: 1 Stars

This maybe a film with artistic merit but the thing I dislke about this film genre just like any other dealing

with an unpopular war is that it just becomes a liberal ideologue's feast.The conservative value and securi-

concerns are arbitrarily dismissed or worse demonized.Especially now that a tsunami of liberalism is swee-

ping America Hollywood surely will come out soon with more films treating world security as the villain's

illusion.

DVD Review: In the Valley of Elah - Blu-ray Info
Summary: 3 Stars

Version: U.S.A / Region Free
Aspect ratio: 2.40:1
VC-1 BD-25
Running time: 2:01:17
Movie size: 20,86 GB
Disc size: 23,32 GB
Average video bit rate: 17.14 Mbps
Dolby TrueHD 5.1 16-bit English
DD AC3 5.1 640Kbps English / French / Spanish

Subtitles: English SDH / French / Spanish
Number of chapters: 27

#After Iraq and Coming Home - Documentary (43 min)
#Deleted scenes (6 min)

DVD Review: Another Piece of Fiction Claiming to Be Based on True Events
Summary: 2 Stars

As soon as I saw the, "Based on True Events" disclaimer at the beginning of the film, I immediately became suspicious that the film would use dramatic license too liberally.

And it did. Yes, some soldiers murdered another soldier. Yes, they tried to burn the remains. But that's where the similarities end.

This is just another despicable, "The war is making baby killers out of our boys" film that exploits a true life tragedy to advance anti-war sentiment...and dishonors the other brave men and women who did serve honorably in Iraq.

Everything else depicted in the film did not happen--no cell phone with graphic videos of events in Iraq, no father doing his own detective work, no fried chicken after the murder, no brother who also got killed in Iraq, no assisting female detective, no sexist pig detectives, no suicide, no stonewalling military police, no city police unwilling to investigate...

One word sums this movie up perfectly--fraud. If it were just a work of fiction, fine. But instead it tries to dupe the audience into thinking it's real by claiming it's based on true events.

Description of In the Valley of Elah (Combo HD DVD and Standard DVD) [HD DVD]

Mike Deerfield returns to the U.S. after his tour of duty in Iraq and abruptly goes missing. His father Hank a spit-and-polish ex-MP from the Vietnam era goes looking for him. What he finds goes to the heart of American combat experiences in the Iraqi conflict. Academy Award?-winning* Crash filmmaker Paul Haggis teams with Oscar?- winning* actors Tommy Lee Jones Charlize Theron and Susan Sarandon in a probing powerful fact-based look at fathers and sons?and at a nation and the young soldiers it sends into battle. Jones plays Hank whose quest lays bare a tangled web of cover-up murder mystery and profound revelation about the personal costs of war.Format: DVD HD Genre:?DRAMA/MILITARY & WAR UPC:?085391189961 Manufacturer No:?118996

In career Army officer Hank Deerfield's worldview, the American military exists to bring order to the world, and honor and dignity to every one of its soldiers. As played by Tommy Lee Jones, in a layered performance that will haunt the viewer long after the film is over, Deerfield wears the Army life like he does his standard-issue white T-shirts--unconsciously making a cheap motel bed with crisp inspection-ready corners. Yet if war is hell, the purgatory for the relatives of damaged soldiers can cause far more anguish, and Paul Haggis' quietly devastating In the Valley of Elah tells this story through Deerfield, who is desperately trying to piece together the fate of his adored son Mike, a soldier in Iraq.

Mike's company has returned from duty, but he is missing; Hank flies from Tennessee to Fort Rudd in the Southwest, to conduct his own investigation into the disappearance. There he meets a smart but put-upon police officer (Charlize Theron, glammed-down but still showing a bit too much sexy collarbone for a cop) who also smells something off in the Army's official story of the disappearance. The two form an unlikely team, but as a friend tells Deerfield early on, "You gotta trust somebody sometime, Hank," and Mike's vanishing is Hank's tipping point.

As Hank pieces together the horrifying story of Mike's fate, the incremental pain becomes etched in Jones' ragged features, and the camera captures all of it--far more powerfully than could a million words of reportage from the front lines. Theron's performance is also strong, and Susan Sarandon is moving if underutilized as Hank's grief-stricken wife, robbed of the simple nuclear family life she so wanted. "They shouldn't send heroes to places like Iraq," says one of Mike's buddies late in the film, and it's the viewers' collective sorrow--and the film's great achievement--to feel that at the deepest human level. --A.T. Hurley

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