Film Fight: Two Faces of War

Tommy Lee Jones is no Marlon Brando, but with a quiet, unemotional, understated performance in the film, In the Valley of Elah, he does as much to expose the horror of war as Brando did with his incredible performance in Apocalypse Now (Marlon Brando and Martin Sheen, 1979).

Two wars: the Vietnam War, which brought students storming on the campus and crowds protesting on the streets; and the Iraq War, which stirs fights at the dinner table, but … well, what can we do? So let´s have dessert.

Two actors: Marlon Brando and his incredible performance as the toad-like, hardly-human creature in Apocalypse; and Tommy Lee Jones as an aging, hardworking, God-fearing war vet, sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and questioning why his son, back from a tour of duty in Iraq, is missing.

This is the role of a career for Tommy Lee Jones–the dashing, self-assured hero of Men in Black, so cool that he jumps inside a jaw-dripping monster to retrieve his weapon. In Elah, he has the courage to present, to the camera´s eye, his saggy skin, baggy undereyes, and a middle-aged pouch.

He is a father, an ex-soldier of unquestioned patriotism; one son has already been killed in battle, now the other one, returned from a tour of duty in Iraq, has gone missing. He only wants to find his son.

In the biblical fantasy scenes of Apocalypse, with the bloated Marlon Brando like a creature out of hell, we see the underbelly of war–the guts, the blood, the nightmare of killing in its most brutal form.

In the biblical Elah (the name of the valley where David fought Goliath), a father jumps into his beat-up pickup to find his son, only to discover burned body parts in a weedy field. The explanation: his kid has become addicted, went for drugs, and got killed by drug dealers. No emotion–just a father not satisfied with the answers… but the horror is just as profound.

Emotionless, he asks questions of a sloppy, lazy police system which is ready and happy to accept easy answers. But this father has the remains of his son´s cell phone and almost undecipherable bits and pieces of war shots, gradually unfolding what this war has done to the heart of an honorable soldier–how he is debased into torturing the enemy. The father sees all this and [Spoiler alert!] remembers one frantic phone call from his son: Get me out of here!

Tommy Lee Jones is remarkably courageous to take this role. He´s always fun to watch–his swagger, his dry humor… He´s larger than life. But not in Elah. He is real life–just a man who has come for answers. And when he gets the answer, he climbs into his clunky pickup and goes home to deal with the truth.

Marlon Brando exploded our senses. Tommy Lee Jones simply breaks our heart.