But however you judge the movie's politics, and whatever its flaws, there is something inarguable, something irreducibly honest and right, about Jones' performance. Hank exists on a continuum with the other lawmen he has recently played, in particular the Texas sheriffs in The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, which he directed, and Joel and Ethan Coen's No Country for Old Men, which will be released later this fall.
Like them, Hank carries around an innate sense of right and wrong, and Jones's creased face, at once kindly and severe, is a manifest sign of his old-school temperament. Hank is the kind of man who shines his shoes every night, says grace before each meal and makes his motel-room bed according to military standards.
At every point, as Hank nags and pushes Emily in her investigation, the movie registers the panic and dread that he fights to keep down. These feelings come through to some extent in the reactions of his wife, Joan (Susan Sarandon), whom he tries to protect, but more decisively, and more hauntingly, through the moods Haggis creates (with the crucial assistance of Roger Deakins, the cinematographer responsible for the movie's austere, washed-out look, and Mark Isham, who wrote the eerie, sparingly applied musical score).
Almost no violence takes place on screen, but there are times when In the Valley of Elah feels almost like a horror film. Its steady crescendo of suspense builds toward the revelation - and vanquishing - of some unspeakable, monstrous evil.
But since the monster has no identifiable physical shape, it is not so easily defeated. While there are killers, liars and sadists to be found in this movie, there are not really any villains. And there is no reassuring conclusion. If it is anguished, even despairing, In the Valley of Elah is also compassionate. At heart it is a somber ballad about young men who remain lost in a dangerous, confusing place even after they come home.
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