I'm a Tommy Lee Jones fan. Take a look at his drawn face as he listens to his son's killer's confession in the movie In the Valley of Elah. Or, the scene in the same movie in which Jones tells the story of David and Goliath--uncomfortably, but with a sense of certainty. Why do they send a young boy to fight the giant?
Tommy Lee Jones plays a retired military investigator notified his son's gone awol shortly after arriving in the U.S. from Iraq. The story is inspired by an actual case and dvd special features include interview footage with the parents of the actual soldier. In the film, Susan Sarandon plays the soldier's mother. Her own interview includes a plea for society to take care of our soldiers when they come home.
The film portrays atrocities of our wars in Iraq, the post-traumatic stress syndrome our soldiers suffer afterwards, and the costs of war on all our souls, especially those of parents and children. Humanity is the first casualty of war, says one of the Iraq war veterans involved in the picture.
In an opening scene of the movie, an immigrant janitor of a public building has run the American flag up the flagpole upside down. Tommy Lee Jones shows him how it's done. The flag flown upside down signals distress, he explains. In a closing scene, on arrival home, Jones finds the package the boy had sent home from Iraq, a battered, frayed American flag, and he takes it to the school, runs it up the pole, upside down.
If this doesn't speak volumes in the context of these comments, it will if you see the movie.
