In the Valley of Elah

In the Valley of Elah (2007), which you can watch online on iFILM, is Paul Haggis's investigative drama anchored by Tommy Lee Jones as Hank Deerfield, a retired military policeman. His son came back from a tour in Iraq, then walked off his base days later and dropped out of contact entirely. Hank gets in his truck and goes looking.

The local cops shrug it off as a soldier gone AWOL, not their problem. Only Detective Emily Sanders agrees to keep pulling threads. What surfaces looks nothing like a desertion, and the deeper Hank gets into his son's last months — the phone calls home, the corrupted clips on a damaged handset — the less he recognizes the young man who left. The script grew out of the real case of Sergeant Richard Davis, and the title nods to the ground where David faced Goliath.

Haggis didn't make a war picture; he made a slow, sorrowful look at the damage combat does long before anyone can see it. Jones holds the film together with barely a word, with Charlize Theron and Susan Sarandon alongside him. Stream In the Valley of Elah (2007) online on iFILM.