Susan Granger’s review of “The Messenger” (Oscilloscope)
Yes, this drama is about our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the war is never on-screen. Nothing explodes on the battlefield, and there are no harrowing flashbacks to the conflict in Baghdad and Tikrit. Instead, it revolves around the relationship between two casualty-notification officers who are deployed to deliver the devastating news of a soldier’s death to the next of kin.
After taking shrapnel in the leg and face to rescue a fallen comrade in a roadside attack in Iraq, heroic Staff Sgt. Will Montgomery (Ben Foster) has three months left on his enlistment when he’s reassigned to Casualty Notification duty (a.k.a. the Angels of Death Squadron), one of the Army’s most difficult jobs. His new commanding officer, Capt. Tony Stone (Woody Harrelson), is a boisterous, strictly-by-the-book career-soldier and recovering alcoholic who, apparently, has become psychologically inured to their grim task and finds Montgomery’s attitude overly empathetic and inappropriate, particularly in dealing with a recently slain soldier’s seemingly stoic widow, Olivia Pitterson (Samantha Morton), and her young son. Then again, brooding, stress-filled Montgomery is still recovering from the disheartening discovery that his ex-girlfriend, Kelly (Jenna Malone), has just become engaged to someone else. And Stone’s rigidly robotic instructions (i.e.: park down the block, don’t say “Good Morning” and don’t hug or touch family members who are suddenly plunged into mourning) chafe in their inherent emotional distancing.
“It’s a peculiar job,” Stone admits. “There’s no such thing as a satisfied customer.”
To relieve what would otherwise have been an unrelenting chronicle of distress-filled vignettes, shot with a shaky, hand-held camera, Israeli-born writer/director Oren Moverman and his co-writer Alessandro Camon consciously inject light-hearted, humanistic, “womanizing” moments that occasionally misfire, and credit Will Foster (“3:10 to Yuma”) and Woody Harrelson (2012”) for the depth of their off-hours, on-screen rapport. Both actors deliver impressive, male-bonding performances. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “The Messenger” is a poignant, insightful 7. And if the topic seems familiar, you may have seen Kevin Bacon’s similar HBO movie, “Taking Chance” and Francis Ford Coppola’s “Gardens of Stone.”
