Essentially an anti-war and patriotic film wrapped in the shell of criminal suspense, it's very moving, especially good. The story tells the story of a father and a female police detective working together to investigate the murder of his father's son, a soldier who had just returned from Iraq.
The film follows in the footsteps of the father, dissecting the case from a perspective outside his private institution. He has also served in the military, and with sharp instincts and the values of the military environment in which he lives, he is involved in finding the killer in a way that is different from the current Army Investigation Service. During this period, the corruption, deception and ineffective investigation of the military were exposed, which was a flogging to the military.
In addition to the resistance to the system, the father-son relationship and human nature were also discussed in this process. In the eyes of his father, his son is well-behaved and kind, but in fact, he is full of swear words, negative and violent, and even exposed to drugs. What is even more terrifying is that most soldiers are like this. This is a group of people who serve the country and represent the country's image, but have greatly deviated from the so-called orthodox values. And the reason for all this? It is the destruction of human nature by the unjust war of aggression—that is, the unjustifiable war in Iraq.
The title of the film is very interesting, it comes from a bedtime story the father told to the son of a female police detective, a warrior who defeated a giant with extraordinary courage in this place in the valley of Elah, won the dignity and honor. A double victory of strength - which also allowed the little boy to be injected with an extraordinary needle of courage. This episode seems to have nothing to do with the main line, but it is still a variation of the main theme of the United States.
So the only nuance in the film that made me uncomfortable was that the director made Iraq a place of evil that killed American soldiers. As if the people who had been to Iraq could accept the aggression obediently, there would be no such corrosive harm to American soldiers.
Even so, the director finally made the American flag appear in the background of the photo frame, floating in the sky and never falling.
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