Longer version of a review in Friday's Oregonian. (Oh, and I also contributed an item on the new "North by Northwest" DVD/Blu-ray to the paper's "Wired Gift Guide.")
"The Messenger" manages to calculate the cost of war without showing it.
Instead, director/co-writer Oren Moverman's stripped-down, finely tuned drama follows two Army soldiers (Ben Foster, Woody Harrelson) assigned to a "casualty notification team" -- a grim detail that sends the pair on missions to suburban homes and apartments to tell parents and spouses that their loved ones were killed in action.
Moverman shows us six separate notifications, many filmed in relentless handheld single takes, with actors including Samantha Morton and Steve Buscemi playing the next of kin. The film's power lies in the blunt, mostly unaffected manner in which it brings overseas conflict right to your doorstep. Foster and Harrelson's characters are, in effect, invading American homes with the worst news that can be delivered, in what Harrelson's character clinically describes as a "pure hit-and-get operation."
The movie's greatest strength is its restraint. Moverman eschews the message-movie lectures and respects his audience (and those who serve) with a mostly no-frills presentation of his drama, abetted by strong actors who react to bad news in ways ranging from befuddled to violent. I frankly found Moverman's handling of PTSD to be more nuanced than the much-praised "The Hurt Locker"'s, which deals with many of the same ideas from an action-movie, crying-in-the-shower-with-your-clothes-on angle. (The two films --both powerful in their own ways -- would make for a fascinating double feature, I think; they come at stress and loss from opposing angles.)
Foster and Harrelson -- playing a wounded sergeant and a recovering-alcoholic career soldier, respectively -- also do more with less. Foster puts his naturally offbeat energy to excellent use as a man furiously internalizing his pain and getting way too fascinated with Morton's war widow. A long, single-take scene with Foster and Morton in a kitchen is among the movie's best, filled with lust, grief and gentleness conveyed in tones barely above a whisper. Harrelson gives what might be a career performance as a jaded mentor who tries to conduct each notification using a well-rehearsed set of rules of engagement. The only scenes that felt "actorly" to me come when the pair drunkenly crash an ex-girlfriend's wedding party; otherwise, "The Messenger" has a verisimilitude rare in films tackling this subject matter.
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(112 min., rated R, playing in Portland at the Fox Tower) Grade: B-plus
'The Messenger' (The Oregonian, Friday, Dec. 4, 2009)
Wired Gift Guide (The Oregonian, Friday, Dec. 4, 2009)
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