Fall Movie Preview 2007

In the Valley of Elah
Tommy Lee Jones, Charlize Theron
OPENING SEPTEMBER 21st

For his first time back in the director's chair since Crash won the Best Picture Oscar, Paul Haggis takes on the war in Iraq. And he does it by bringing the war home. Other fall films, including Robert Redford's Lions for Lambs, with Tom Cruise and Meryl Streep, and Gavin Hood's Rendition, with Reese Witherspoon and Jake Gyllenhaal, take the same approach. But Haggis goes for broke emotionally by showing us young men who survive battle in one piece but lose their souls. Tommy Lee Jones -- doing the finest work of his career here and in No Country for Old Men -- plays a retired soldier who lost one son to war. The other (Jonathan Tucker) has been murdered while home on leave from Iraq. With the help of a rogue cop (an outstanding Charlize Theron), the father determines to get past bureaucratic brick walls and his own racism to learn the truth. Bitch all you want about Haggis as a master manipulator, this movie grabs you hard and gets you good.