In the Valley of Elah is the new movie by Paul Haggis, the guy whp did Crash. It's sort of a murder mystery that takes place near an army base and involves some soldiers just back from Iraq. The first ninety minutes of this 2 hour film were good. There were moments of preachiness, as I expected after watching Crash, but overall it wasn't too much. I was into it. Then, it just started to suck. The payoff was sooooo bad, and the last half hour was ridiculously preachy, pointless, and unrelated to most of what had happened in the rest of the movie. It was really bad. Also, there was nowhere near enough Josh Brolin or James Franco.

my thoughts exactly... except the last part about james franco