DVD REVIEW: The Messenger

WHEN DEATH COMES CALLING

While there doesn't seem any end in sight to American presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, more and more films are pouring out of Hollywood exploring different aspects of the conflict, inevitably, from an Amercian point-of-view. So, if The Hurt Locker was sensational for its examination of the de-humanising effects of war (although never a direct indictment of America's war on terror), through the story of a bomb disposal squad, The Messenger, another independent film directed by debutant Oren Moverman, a war veteran from Israel and co-written by him and Alessandro Camon, looks at the lives of officers who have the unenviable task of delivering news of soldiers' deaths to their loved ones. There isn't a gentle way of doing it and Captain Tony Stone (Woody Harrelson) knows it from years of experience. He just likes to say it succinctly, without any feeling, like a mechanical voice-recorded message that plays the same words each time. Stone may never have been a very perceptive man, but his line of work has further dulled his senses and he's as much a ticking time bomb as Sergeant James in The Hurt Locker. Harrelson brings a maniacal quality to his character with his crazy eyes and acidic voice and delivers a performance so physical in its severity, it's well worth the Oscar nomination he got.