Excrutiating Psychological Pain Locker

The Messenger

Ok, so do not watch this movie if you are the type of viewer who demands a solid uplifting arc at the end of depressing films. You know the type. Hero is happy, hero gets screwed over then the last twenty minutes of the film hero finds a reason to carry on and ends up super stoked about life. Not this movie. It ends on a positive note, but it puts you through the wringer to get there.

In The Messenger Woody Harrelson plays Tony Stone, a casualty notification officer. He is assigned to notofy NOKs, or next of kin, that their loved ones have been killed in Iraq. Cheery stuff, right? Well add to that the fact that he is also assigned to train Ben Foster's character, Will Montgomery, to do the job with him. Montgomery is a recently returned war vet who was given a medal for heroism he is clearly, deeply uncomfortable having received.

Both men are ordered to adhere to strict protocol in notifying the families of the dead servicemen. In doing so they come off as unfeeling, uncaring griefbots. They speak in monotone, adhere to a script and under no circumstances touch the NOKs. This contrasts greatly with the scenes of the characters off duty. Their profoundly damaged psyches at having been in war are hammered every day as they serve as repositories for the outpouring of misery the next of kin aim at them. The wounds these two characters have are deep and festering and everyday their job of notifying only serves to reopen them.

The closest movie I can think of to compare this to is Copolla's Garden's of Stone. In both movies we get to see service men performing wartime duties on the home front. These are men who because of post traumatic stress disorder, a feeling that they are part of a unit that is doing its part while they are not, or just a general inability to reaclimate to civilian life feel a deep cognitive dissonance. The dissonance is most deeply underlined when one of the next of kin, played by Steve Buscemi asks the Stone and Montgomery why they did not die in Iraq. It is a question that both characters ask themselves every day.

The movie is not completely wrist slittingly depressing. There are some uplifting moments in the camaraderie between Stone and Montgomery. What is most important is that the movie is good and it is good because the parts that in a bigger budget movie might be over done are pitch perfect here. The director uses the right amount of restraint in order to show the notification scenes in a real present way. Every time the two soldiers notify a family one feels as if one were really watching it happen, not just a theatrical representation of it.

All of the soldier's feelings are completely internalized. So much of them is shut off that it as if they, too are as dead as the soldiers on whom they are reporting. The Messenger is an important movie in that it shows the real human cost of the war. Very few media outlets have done this and the deaths and injuries resulting from Iraq are too profound for us as a society to ignore. In ten or twenty years this movie will be remembered as one of the better films about the Iraq war.

Here is the film's trailer.

You should rent this movie if:

1. You are into smaller independent films.
2. You like your war movies nuanced.
3. You were for the war.

You should buy this movie if:

1. Woody Harrelson
2. You are a Steve Buscemi completist.
3. It really is a great character study, war movie and buddy film all rolled into one.

Here is a link to Amazon where you can buy The Messenger on DVD for reasonable price:



Here is a link to the Netfix Roku player. You can use this to stream netflix watch it instantly films and tv right to your television:

Don Draper: American Badass

Mad Men




Ok, I admit I am coming to this party tardy. But let me just tell all you other holdouts out there that if you have not seen Mad Men get this crap in your netflix queue pronto. I originally watched some episodes a couple of years ago out of order, did not understand what the show was trying to do and canned it. I recently sat down and watched the first nine episodes back to back and let me tell you, holy crap.

The show takes place in 1960 in a fictional advertising firm called Sterling-Cooper. Every character that works in this office and their significant others are so profoundly unhappy it is hard to even quantify the depth of their misery and yet none of the characters misses any opportunity to make themselves more unhappy than they are at any given moment.

The remarkable thing about this show is how funny it is. All of the screwed up attitudes people had fifty years ago about sex, race, equal rights, bigotry, the environment and communism are in full effect here and no one bats an eye. The secretaries exist to have sex with their bosses or prevent anyone else from knowing who they are having sex with. The booze and cigarettes are ubiquitous and the white upper class ad men are blissfully and naively unaware of the world that exists one inch beyond the tips of their noses.

This is the type of show that has a closeted gay character whom everyone else considers without irony to be a confirmed bachelor. Virtually every character is in some form of super denial and all are some parts tragic and comic. Don Draper, a partner and the creative director at Sterling-Cooper, is the main character. On the surface he is every man's ideal best buddy. Successful, handsome and smart; smooth is the word that best describes him. Draper, on closer examination, reveals that he has a great deal of inner turmoil that causes him to make potentially dangerous decisions with his personal life.

Draper's opposite number in the office is Joan Harris the office manager. This woman may be the best looking lady I have ever seen. Dressed in sixties clothing that accentuates her rather curvy bod she uses the office to push her own agenda. At times she seems to be out to have fun and at other times her more calculating nature shows through and it looks as if she is merely working at Sterling-Cooper in order to find a husband. Because she doesn't respect most of the men she works for this is a source of conflict for her. She wants to be taken seriously as a smart, capable woman, but she doesn't feel that she can abandon her role as sexy office sex bomb. That doing so would represent a loss of power.

It is these trade offs that dominate every show. Seeing the compromises that people make, the things that people value which today would be valueless gives one the feeling that they are eavesdropping on a dinner party their parents are having, hearing conversations lost and from long ago.

You should rent this TV Show if:

1. You want to see a truly excellent show.
2. You are under 40 and want to know what the swinging sixties were really like.
3. You think things are going badly and want to feel good about your life and relationships.

You should buy this TV Show if:

1. You want an example of what an excellent TV show looks like to pull out and watch everytime Win it in a Minute comes on.
2. Christina Hendricks is the only example of intelligent design I can think of.
3. Don Draper is James Bond, Superfly and Kung Fu all rolled into one.
4. Buy it.

Here is a link to Amazon where you can buy Mad Men Season 1 on DVD for reasonable price: