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Spoiler Points for In the Valley of Elah (2007) [R] 124 minutes
WIP™ Scale: $14.25
Film's Official Website • Film's Trailer
Click to read the non-spoiler review
Mike Deerfield and his Death:
• He had obviously lost touch with his true self and turned to things that would numb him from reality: drugs, alcohol, and strip clubs.
• What changed him? It seems as though the event that catalyzed the transformation was the day when he was driving the lead convoy and his training was never to stop under any circumstances because the convoy is then susceptible to attack. But, on that particular day, a small boy ran out into the street, and his co-pilot shouted at him not to stop. He wanted to stop, and given no other ways to swerve to avoid hitting the boy, he was left with not choice but to hit the boy. This scarred him mentally and emotionally forever.
• The night of Mike's death, he got into an altercation with Corporal Steve Penning at a strip club. Eventually, when driving around afterward, the two got into it again verbally, prompting them to stop the car and start fighting. His life ends with 42 stab wounds at the hand of Penning (Wes Chatham). The men then pulled his body into a field and set it on fire. They took his credit card from his wallet and then went to have a nice chicken dinner at a place close to the base where they could then have proof that he was with them at the time of the chicken dinner, but then disappeared when they left him off before they got to the base a few minutes later. This clever trick was revealed when the signature on the receipt did not match Mike's signature known by his father proving that, in fact, Mike had not been with them at the Chicken restaurant as they claimed.
The Final Scene
On his trip to find his son, Hank Deerfield (Tommy Lee Jones) passes by a school where the custodian is raising the flag in front. He leaps out to assist. The El Salvadoran man does not seem to know that the flag must be hung with the blue square on top. He asks the man, "Do you know what it means when you hang a flag upside down? It's the international distress call…." The man seems grateful for the help.
As the final scene of the film, we see Hank Deerfield in front of that same school raising the ragged flag sent back to him by Mike (it was what was in the mysterious package that his mother, Joan [Susan Sarandon], could not resist opening) upside down and then duct taping the ropes so that the flag would not be easily taken down. This is obviously, his signal to the world about the distress he perceives the nation, as a whole, to be in at the time.
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