The Messenger

Madman

R4 DVD

This is a surprisingly sensitive and human film to come from a U.S. studio. I didn’t think they had it in them and I certainly wouldn’t have picked Woody Harrelson as a lead actor. It all comes together, though, and director Oren Moverman has put together a fine film dealing with a rarely-mentioned part of a war.

Staff Sergeant Will Montgomery was recently injured in Iraq and only has a few months to go before he is demobilised. He is transferred to Colonel Dorsett;s Casualty Notification Team to serve out his time. These men and women are the ones who must notify the next-of-kin (NOK) of the death in combat of their son or daughter. It is a difficult job because they do not know how the NOK will react. They are not trained in grief counselling; their job is just to deliver the message in a compassionate way then get out. It is described as “hit and git”. There is a code of behaviour. Don’t touch the NOK. Don’t talk of “the deceased – they have a name.”.

Will is teamed up with the experienced Captain Tony Stone, a man who has seen action and has been in the Notification team for a long time. He knows the rules they follow are for their own good. Will soon finds out why. He faces reactions from hysteria to abuse to the girl who hasn’t told her father she was married because he hated her boyfriend. Although he feels compassion for these people he must follow the rules.

One day he delivers the bad news to a young woman who takes it better than usual – their marriage may have been on the verge of breakdown anyway. The hardest part would be explaining to her young son why his daddy won’t be coming home. Will commits the great sin – he becomes involved with the woman in spite of his training and Stone’s disapproval.

He and Stone are becoming closer as they go about their sad job. They begin to spend time together when off duty and we find both have some emotional baggage of their own. Will has even considered suicide. As he becomes more aware of his own problems, he can now confront the problem of the young woman with whom he is involved.

The film not only highlights the grief of the next-of-kin, it also shows how relatively unprepared the soldiers themselves are for delivering their dreadful message. Woody Harrelson and Ben Foster give powerful performances that leave us believing that there must be a better way to do this job. There are no political speeches, no appeals to God, just a pair of war-damaged soldiers doing the hardest job of all.

The film was a budget production and didn’t sit too well with U.S. audiences. Perhaps it was too close to home, since these good citizens voted for the politicians who sent the youngsters off to war in the first place. Perhaps they don’t like to be reminded of that. In that case the film is timely and worth watching.

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