In Munro, Tennessee, hard-nosed former military police Hank Deerfield (Tommy Lee Jones) receives a call that his son Mike is missing after returning from Iraq and soon to be declared AWOL. He and his wife Joan (Susan Sarandon) had already lost a son to war. He travels to Fort Rudd, New Mexico. Local police detective (Charlize Theron) is overwhelmed by troubled vets and hazing from fellow cops. Mike's burnt dismembered body is soon found on military property. It becomes a fight over jurisdiction and road blocks from superiors.This is some of Paul Haggis' best work. It's a bleak portrait. Tommy Lee Jones is great at this type of hard-nosed man. Theron's struggles as a working single mom is compelling. The murder mystery is stark. It's not really a whodunnit mystery which makes the ending fitting. The dark take on the Iraq campaign does overwhelm at times especially the reveal at the end. Haggis takes a couple of parting shots at the end that are probably unnecessary. By that time, the point has already been made.

That's there is to it. The story, despite putting the tag of being based of true events, really puts too much weight on the dramatization and the flow of the storytelling. It really contains the classic ingredients for a detective movie, the mysterious disappearance, the eventually body found, the different suspects and motives, the leads that instead send the main characters off track, and the classic moment when main characters just find out the truth, the perpetrators, who have been there all along, just admit the crime. These things thus do not really add anything to the movie's offering. The mood also doesn't differ from what we see in The General's Daughter (1999) or A Few Good Men (1992). The acting overall s quite nice. Tommy Lee Jones seems like he never acted any other kind of character besides the often calm yet hard-boiled senior. Charlize Theron made her role here rise from an undermined woman to someone the investigation depends upon.

Every play/screenplay contains a mystery. David Mamet's credo. Haggis and Mark Boal know how to structure a story with plenty of mystery. Elah is one of the best treatments of Iraq subject matter you'll ever see. They tread some sensitive material and they know how to work a plot. Charlise Theron and Tommy Lee Jones are fascinating to watch, they are the synthesis of two types of acting: playing-against and underplay. They are the best at quiet aggression and anxiety. The film rides on a razor's edge and the cast couldn't be better at balance and restraint. Jason Patric and Josh Brolin submit a low-key intensity in their performances that is nerve-wracking. Great stuff. This film is not for everyone. If you like what the Bush administration accomplished with creating a war in Iraq, what it has done to our society and some of our young military men and women, this movie is stark, real, and unpleasant in it's duplicity of military duty and innate civil morality. You will feel caught in the vise along with the civilians and military men depicted. Ultimately, the film belongs to Jones. He is a father who must face the truth about his son's behavior in the war zone, and the truth of his murder by his own comrades. Theron and/or Jones should have won awards for their roles. Brilliant filmmaking supported by equally brilliant acting. Feature movie-making at its best. If you don't like this kind of story construction, watch television. Bite the bullet and sit through it. You owe it to so many who have served and been injured, physically and mentally, by our government in a false war that never should have been engaged.

From director Paul Haggis (Crash), I knew the leading actor of this film, but I did not remember any of the other good names of the cast, or that the lead actor was nominated an Academy Award (the only big award for the film), and I was definitely looking forward to watching and finding out if this was deserved. Basically Monroe, Tennessee ageing war veteran Hank Deerfield (Oscar nominated Tommy Lee Jones) is told by the military that his son Mike (Jonathan Tucker) has recently returned from a tour of duty in Iraq, but he has gone AWOL and disappeared, so Hank starts a search for him. He keeps his wife Joan (Susan Sarandon) updated with phone calls telling her what he finds, and he gets aid in the investigation and personal involvement in the case from police detective Emily Sanders (Charlize Theron). Hank himself is retired from the military, he used to be an investigator, so he knows how they work, and he is becoming frustrated and concerned that both the military and the police do not seem to take interest in the case for his missing son. They do manage to find Mike, but he has been murdered, and his body has been mutilated and burned, so it cannot be identified physically, but they conclude the identity from possessions, but the military are suggesting that he was killed in drug related violence, and they try to stop the police investigating the death. Hank, obviously distraught, is still determined to find out the truth about the death of Mike, beginning with his platoon fellow soldiers who are all lying to the him and the authorities about what the young man was doing with them on the last night they were with him, but Deerfield does not believe they are the murderers. In the end, after all the conclusions about what they were doing on the last night Mike was alive, it turns out the soldiers with him did murder and dismember his body after some kind of argument, one in particular admits to suffering strong post-traumatic stress disorder from events of the war, and it was all a cover-up, so the right people are arrested, and Hank can at least settle because justice has been done. Also starring James Franco as Sgt. Dan Carnelli, Titanic's Frances Fisher as Evie, Speed 2: Cruise Control's Jason Patric as Lt. Kirklander, Men in Black 3's Josh Brolin as Chief Buchwald, Wes Chatham as Corporal Steve Penning, Barry Corbin as Arnold Bickman and Jake McLaughlin as Spc. Gordon Bonner. Jones gives a terrific gritty performance that we have seen many times from him before, but obviously with a more personal mission, Theron (who does not wear makeup or attempt to look gorgeous) does really well as the small town cop eventually determined to get to the bottom of the investigation into a suspicious military death, and the supporting cast members all ass their good moments as well, the story has the smallest political and difficult to understand bits, but all in all it is a well-paced traditional detective style plot, with some disturbing and prolific scenes to keep you watching, a compelling crime drama. Very good!