A few years back, there was a boom of war films dealing with the Iraq conflict, but they didn’t do well at the box office. Some claimed “too soon”, others claimed that they weren’t that good to begin with, yet did anyone consider that they felt like agenda films? Republicans and Democrats are going to be at odds until this mess in the Middle East wraps up, if it does, and it’s hard to separate politics from a war film, especially since everyone has a political idea on what’s going on with the war.

The Messenger is a smart, powerful film. After seeing it, you feel like you just crashed into a brick wall.

Stripping politics and the nature of war away, we follow a soldier (Ben Foster) who is assigned to be in the Army’s Causality Notification Service, with Captain Stone (Woody Harrelson).  The film is a raw, emotional look at the effects of war. Harrelson character comments on people who fail to realize what war is, as he talks about how people wave their little American flags, thank soldiers for their service, all of that patriotic stuff, but become shocked when he shows up to their door. If you didn’t know, the Causality Notification Service are the two soldier who knock on the door of the next of kin, to regretfully tell them their loved one has died in combat.  It’s a bitch of a job, something what can be easily manipulative in a movie.

Director Oren Moverman handles these emotionally charged scenes with restraint. Each person reacts differently to the news, but Moverman builds the saddness up with the dilemma Ben Foster’s character feels. There’s pain and guilt in his eyes, and at any second he could explode. Moverman reveals characters slowly, peeling back layers when needed, and it all works. I recall the scenes in We Were Soldiers when Madeline Stowe chooses to tell the families herself. It was your typical Hollywood phoniness. The Messenger is a stunning debut film from Moverman, a film that shows the tough job in the services might not be on the front lines.

The film has a subplot involving Ben Foster who strikes up a relationship of sorts with a widow (Samantha Morton) that doesn’t work as well as it should have, but on can forgive it, due to the superb acting and the intensity of the scenes when Foster and Harrleson are walking up to a house to deliver the news. The Messenger asks questions we have rarely asked ourselves when it comes to war: are we really ready for the true consequences of war? Raw, sad, real, and a few hundred adjectives later, The Messenger will leave you trembling; a film you won’t soon forget.

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Tags: Ben Foster, The Messenger, Woody Harrelson