{"id":1819,"date":"2008-05-30T16:10:01","date_gmt":"2008-05-30T15:10:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/?p=1819"},"modified":"2008-05-30T16:10:01","modified_gmt":"2008-05-30T15:10:01","slug":"dvd-pick-in-the-valley-of-elah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/2008\/05\/30\/dvd-pick-in-the-valley-of-elah\/","title":{"rendered":"DVD Pick: In the Valley of Elah"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>There were quite a lot of films about the current war on terror to come out last year but the best from a major Hollywood studio was In the Valley of Elah<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Written and directed by Paul Haggis it is the story of a retired soldier (Tommy Lee Jones<\/a>) who is searching for his missing son, who has just returned from duty in Iraq.<\/p>\n

When he arrives at his military base in Texas, no-one seems to know what has happened and he enlists the help of a local detective (Charlize Theron<\/a>) to find out what exactly is going on.<\/p>\n

Whilst it didn’t make any waves at the box office, it earned Jones an Oscar\u00a0 nomination for Best Actor and managed to be a quietly subversive film about the effects of the current war on terror on those soldiers asked to fight it.<\/p>\n

Based on true events described in a Playboy article by Mark Boal<\/a>, the film explores many of the hot button issues brought up by the recent Iraq conflict<\/a> such as: post-traumatic stress<\/a>, the abuse of prisoners, the recording of the war by soliders and the nature of American patriotism.<\/p>\n

Although the main plot ticks along like a procedural police thriller, it actually proves a clever way of uinearthing the disturbing fallout from the recent conflicts and how they relate to how wars are fought.<\/p>\n

Optimum have done a nice job with the DVD putting on some extras which inlcude:<\/p>\n