"In the Valley of Elah"

The war movie has been a typically American ritual for many decades. It's also been a barometer of America's consciousness, a cinematic dipstick plumbing the depths of our patriotic id. A decade ago, films like "Saving Private Ryan" (1998) and "Three Kings" (1999) proved that confidence was high, as they say- that we were content in our cocoon, for better or for worse as the world's greatest armed resource.

One wonders, after 9/11, how well a film like "Private Ryan" would play today.

Even that perceived noblest of the noble wars- 1941-1945- gave us pause for thought: The aftermath of World War II introduced the concept of the "home again" picture, opening our eyes to the truth that, after the fever of victory fades, the price we pay for fighting is always significant.

In 1946, "The Best Years of Our Lives" won a Best Supporting Oscar for Harold Russell, a non-actor who'd lost both hands during the war. Russell played the quiet, otherwise unassuming Homer, a man attempting to settle into his former life. The film won seven Oscars in total, including one for Best Picture.

Vietnam produced an abundance of "home again" flicks and, in fact, delivered more anti-war responses than gungho sentiment. Sensitive films like "Coming Home" and "Born on the Fourth of July" parried with more aggressive films like "Full Metal Jacket," "Casualties of War" and "The Deer Hunter," none of which ended with any giddy feeling of hawkish optimism. Even the superficially pro-American "Apocalypse Now" offered the astute notion that, just below the surface, war was little more than lurking madness.

Now, in spite of the country's high degree of patriotism since 9/ 11, I suspect Hollywood is sensing divided loyalties. Do we trust Big Oil or Big Government any more than we do Bin Laden? Once Hollywood begins to doubt our own rhetoric-shrouded spin, can the rest of the nation be far behind?

I believe "In the Valley of Elah" is a product of such suspicion, a film that waves a proud yet tattered battle-weary flag. Writer/ director Paul Haggis delivers a poignant antiwar message disguised as a bleak but gripping drama. In fact, if you're not looking for anti-war sentiment you may not even find it. "Elah" is a "home again" picture, as seen from the eyes of a soldier's father whose son, back from Iraq less than a week, suddenly goes AWOL.

Tommy Lee Jones plays Hank Deerfield, a retired war vet who searches for his missing son, Mike. Hank is a God-fearing, flag-waving mid-Westerner who still sees war as noble. He's a simple and intelligent man who also believes that war, when deemed so by those in charge, is "in our best interest."

Yet Hank doesn't get much assistance from those on the base. Even his son's fellow soldiers, readily singing Mike's praises, seem incapable of helping Hank find him. Maybe drugs, they suggest- marking Hank's first realization that his son wasn't the sterling soldier he'd thought he was.

Mike had secrets, dark secrets. Hank discovers that, in going forward, he may uncover a son he doesn't want to believe existed.

Off the base, Hank is helped even less by the local cops. Detective Emily Sanders (Charlize Theron) is sympathetic but overworked. In military towns, local cops and military police are notoriously indifferent to each other, and Mike seems to have fallen between the cracks.

But then a mutilated body is found in the desert near the base- and the remainder of "Elah" is told in a series of puzzle pieces that Hank and the reluctant Sanders put together.

The film is an unblinking look at a father's grief- over the loss of his son and the loss of a faith that had sustained him most of his life. Susan Sarandon plays Hank's wife, Joan, a woman foundering in a marriage more of convenience, it seems, than of love. Sarandon is underutilized in the picture; she plays a piece of the puzzle we can observe but really don't experience firsthand.

By the film's conclusion we understand that among the victors, the losers and those left behind by the dead, there are few winners in war.

Yet "Elah's" conclusion also comes across a tad hurried, almost an afterthought. Perhaps it's only puzzling to those of us who don't understand war. Could the dead really be considered so inconsequential?

Director Haggis, who based the film on the 2003 murder of Iraq vet Richard Davis, thankfully leaves most of his manipulative techniques in the drawer and lets audiences feel for themselves- without employing the sappy gimmicks that overdrove previous scripts like "Crash" and "Flags of Our Fathers."

First and foremost, "Elah" is good police drama, and for those of us who recognize the ultimate hopelessness of war, the film is also a convincing propaganda for peace.