THE MESSENGER: bringing the war back home to New Jersey

Give me a character driven story over an action adventure blockbuster any day.
I like films where the characters are the stars not the special effects or explosions. And I'm particularly partial to interesting characters in everyday situations dealing with whatever life (and the scriptwriter) has to throw at them.
Making the ordinary extraordinary trumps making the extraordinary even larger than life everytime.
Which is a roundabout way of saying I really enjoyed THE MESSENGER.
The film examines the consequences of the US involvement in Iraq through the eyes of two soldiers whose job it is to break the news to husbands, wives, mothers and fathers, that their loved one has been killed in action.

Staff Sergeant Will Montgomery (Ben Foster) is three months away from leaving the Army when he's assigned to work with Captain Tony Stone (Woody Harrelson), driving out to families in  suburban New Jersey to deliver the terrible news in person before they hear it from the media. It's not Will's dream job. He's had no training in grief counselling and he's not religious, but he's told that's not the point. He's given a script to learn and instructed that under no circumstances is he to offer consolation to the NoK (next of kin) by touching or hugging them.
Both Will and Tony are men's men, not given to expressing emotion in public or discussing their respective military experiences, although Will has clearly been through a lot. He's still recovering from wounds received in action in Iraq, and now lives a rather isolated existence in a sparsely furnished, impersonally decorated apartment off-base. Tony's given his life to the military and looks to have it altogether, but as the story unfolds it becomes obvious that both men have many problems in common.
Harrelson is the one who's been lauded with award nominations (including one for Best Supporting Actor Oscar) but it's relative unknown Foster who's at the heart of this drama. Initially reluctant to accept the assignment he finds himself unexpectedly affected by the distressing reactions of those to whom he delivers his life-changing message, and inexplicably drawn to one young widow (played by Samantha Morton) in particular.
Despite their outward show of bravado, neither man is who they appear to be and certainly not the kind of figures we've come to expect from cinematic portrayals of cynical, battlehardened vets.The refusal to play up to that stereotype is just one of the rewarding elements to this story.
Another is it's languid pace. First time director Oren Moverman has created an experience which refuses to be rushed yet never outstays it's welcome. The film feels longer than it's sub 2 hour running time but that's not a complaint. Between his direction, his Oscar nominated screenplay and the performances of Foster, Harrelson and Morton, I felt so immersed in their world I would happily have stayed living in it for another hour.
In reviewing Zombieland and 2012 for this blog I expressed my dislike of Woody Harrelson as an actor. That still stands but I have to admit he is good here. The understated way in which he plays Tony Stone makes him considerably less objectionable and I certainly wouldn't begrudge him the Oscar in the unlikely event that it's his name in the envelope.
THE MESSENGER has received just a fraction of the attention paid to The Hurt Locker but for my money it's the superior film.
 

THE HURT LOCKER: Oscar tip overpraised and underwhelming

If THE HURT LOCKER walks away from the Kodak Theater in Hollywood on March 7 with the Oscar for Best Film it won't be because it really is the best film of 2009.
It'll be because the competition is so weak.

THE HURT LOCKER has nothing new to say about it's subject matter, nor does it offer an interesting spin on themes already covered elsewhere. Director Kathryn Bigelow takes "war is hell" as her starting point - in this case the war in Iraq - and proceeds to demonstrate how guerrilla warfare is even more hellish.
Her film focuses on one US Army bomb squad unit in Baghdad and follows them on their daily sorties into the city to defuse IEDs planted by insurgents in cars, under roads, strapped to unwilling suicide bombers, and even sewn into the stomach of a murdered child. 
It's suicidally dangerous work made even more deadly by the environment in which they have to operate. As James, Sanborn and Eldridge attempt to defuse these devices they can feel countless pairs of Iraqi eyes watching them from surrounding buildings. Any one of these onlookers could be holding a detonator or sniper's rifle in their hands, waiting for the moment to inflict maximum casualties.
There's no arguing that these men and - more importantly - their real-life counterparts are incredibly brave. It takes a special kind of person to walk towards a bomb, but it's difficult to develop any real empathy for the characters.
Even as I learned more about each of them as individuals I didn't find myself investing any emotion in them. Maybe I'm suffering from war movie fatigue, or maybe it's that the real battle in Iraq and Afghanistan is even more horrific than it's possible to depict on screen. A Hollywood recreation can't compete with what we can see on the tv news or read about in the newspapers even though Bigelow's cameras can get us closer to the staged action than journalists can.

THE HURT LOCKER starts out looking like a documentary (the casting of three relatively unknown actors in the lead roles contributes greatly to this impression) but then gets sidetracked into drama in it's efforts to give the main character a human face and a backstory. 
Hollywood's fixation with this docudrama approach to telling war stories almost always leaves me with a sense of disappointment. Whatever sense of reality has been created by the documentary approach to telling the story is shattered the moment it switches to drama. 
My suspended disbelief comes crashing down.
Having already won or been nominated for more than fifty awards it's a dead cert that THE HURT LOCKER, director Bigelow and lead actor Jeremy Renner will figure in the Oscar nominations on Tuesday, and there'll likely be nods for cinematography, sound and screenplay as well. 
I just hope that when the Academy members cast their votes they look beyond the subject matter and consider the film itself.