Hollywood's new mandate: Bring the Iraq war home

After the end credits for "In the Valley of Elah," an antiwar drama starring Tommy Lee Jones and Charlize Theron, a visibly moved Iraq war veteran stands to address a hushed audience in the dim theater light.

"When I first went [to Iraq], I didn't necessarily agree with the reasons I went to war," says Ian LaVallée, a member of the organization Iraq Veterans Against the War. Fielding a question at the Kendall Square Cinema during a discussion after the film, he says he believes his fellow veterans died for the wrong cause. "For me, this movie resonates with some of the feeling I had coming back."

As sympathetic audience members wake from Hollywood's spell, the film's message about America ignoring the war's psychological effect on soldiers starts to sink in. Here in the so-called "People's Republic of Cambridge," opposition to the conflict is palpable.

But how will "Elah" and several other Iraq war-themed films opening this fall – "Grace is Gone," "Lions for Lambs," "Redaction," and "The Kingdom" – play elsewhere in America?

On the heels of powerful documentaries such "No End in Sight" and "The Ground Truth: After the Killing Ends" (see story, page 15) comes this spate of "message" films laden with stars such as Tom Hanks, Tom Cruise, Julia Roberts, Jamie Foxx, and John Cusack. Hollywood is on a mission to bring the war home. But critics, pundits, and the filmmakers themselves wonder if audiences might be indifferent to the war, fatigued by it, or not looking for films to engage them in serious topics.

"The challenge for these films is whether large numbers of Americans want to see [them]," says Owen Gleiberman, film critic at "Entertainment Weekly." "People are more apathetic now. It's easier to bury your head in the sand, bury your head in the entertainment."

Times have changed since the late 1970s when audiences, yearning to come to grips with the Vietnam War, flocked to social-protest cinema such as "Coming Home," "The Deer Hunter," and "Apocalypse Now." But those films didn't appear until after the conflict had ended. By contrast, movies released during the fighting tended to be pro-war.

"During Vietnam, we were getting 'Green Berets,' " says Charley Richardson of Military Families Speak Out, a nationwide network of 3,600 military families. John Wayne pushed the jingoistic "Green Berets" (1968) to counter the antiwar movement.

This current barrage of films arrives while the nation is still mired in Iraq. None of the films is particularly sympathetic to the US foreign policy or tactics in the war on terror, but they aren't terribly controversial, either. "Elah" shows patriotic veteran Hank Deerfield (Jones), who has lost a son in Iraq, becoming a jaded disbeliever, while "Rendition," starring Reese Witherspoon, questions torture. Now that widespread support for the current administration has faded, the ideas in these films may not strike today's audiences as subversive.

Filmmakers hope to cut through the clutter of daily news – bombings, violence, dead US soldiers – and tap into mainstream disenchantment. Yet some fear their messages may hit too close to home.

"It's like a bad marriage or bad relationship. We never want to get into the pain of it while it's happening," says Patricia Foulkrod, director of last year's documentary "The Ground Truth."

In her efforts to find an audience, Ms. Foulkrod feels conflicted. "You never want to feel like you have to sugarcoat these thing to get people into the theater. But you never want to be naive about what you have to do to get the largest possible audience."

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