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Directed by Oren Moverman
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The Messenger
All
through the 1990s, the ads for the army, the navy, the marine corps and the
air force were full of the wonderful values of joining them in
peacetime. You could get an
education, paid for by the service, you could travel
to exotic places, and so on. Now
it’s 2010 and we’re fighting two wars at once, and guess
what? People get killed all the
time. That’s what you join
the Army for, to kill or be killed.
And “The Messenger” is the story of two men who are
detailed by the Army to notify next of kin that their son or daughter has
just been killed in action. The
unlikely team are Ben Foster, as Staff Sergeant Will
Montgomery, and Woody Harrelson, as Captain Tony Stone. They park around the corner from their
targets, they march up to the front door, they identify that they’re
talking to the next of kin, they blurt out the script: “We regret to
inform you that your son or daughter was killed in action yesterday; the
Secretary of the Army extends his condolences to you, and within four hours you
will be contacted by a service member who will help you with funeral
arrangements.” There is to
be no touching, no extemporaneous addition to the script, and then the two of
them leave the house. They
do this day after day. One day
their next of kin is Samantha Morton, a mother with a young child, to tell
her that her husband has been killed.
Something about her touches Will, and against his own orders and her
own reluctance he finds a way to keep seeing her. Meanwhile Tony, an ex-alcoholic
who’s also a lifer in the army, begins to slide off the wagon
himself. “The
Messenger” is the story of what happens to each of them. Woody
Harrelson’s performance has been nominated for an Academy Award as Best
Supporting Actor this year. I
think he’s been let down a bit by the script, by Director Oren Moverman, because it plays a little too one-note and
becomes a bit wearysome long before the end. Nevertheless, “The
Messenger” is a good kind of corrective to those old ads and
commercials about the exotic places you could go if only you joined. You still can go; now they’re
called Iraq and Afghanistan. |