The Messenger (**)
Directed by: Oren Moverman Starring: Woody Harrelson, Ben Foster, Samantha Morton, Steve Buscemi, Jenna Malone
Seen: April 27th 2010
** Out of ****
Captain Tony Stone (Harrelson) is a professional in his field, Casualty Notification for the US Army. He is assigned a new partner right at the start of The Messenger, Staff Sergeant Will Montgomery (Foster), just back from action in Iraq, and nursing a few injuries. Captain Stone is extremely rule-based in his training, giving Sergeant Montgomery strict guidelines regarding the casualty notification business. Montgomery is, like we also later realise of Stone, a bit of a tortured soul, as it seems he prefers spending his time alone at home, listening to loud music and looking stern. His only true human connection is an affair of sorts with his ex-girlfriend Kelly (Malone), who is engaged to another man, one she picked up while Will was away on assignment.
Stone is a loud and straight-talking commander to Montgomery, and the two are apprehensive of each other at first, Montgomery because of his complete newcomer status to the assignment, and Stone out of his fear that Montgomery will screw up somewhere along the line and not go according to the book at all times. Their assignment might not necessarily seem like a hard one, but it is probably worse than being in Iraq where the fighting goes does down; safer, but worse. Having to hurry to get the news to families before they hear about their loss on the news is pretty stressful, as is seen in one scene where Montgomery and Stone are pulled over by traffic police en route to a notification detail.
The N.O.K.’s, or next of kin’s, quite explicably tend towards the abusive or in some cases violent – as almost all of them turn to verbal abuse against Stone and Montgomery. Dale Martin (Buscemi) for one even starts pushing Montgomery around upon hearing the news of his son’s death, threatening them all the way back to their car. So it comes as quite a surprise when one woman, Olivia Pitterson (Morton) simply thanks them for the news and shakes their hands while bidding them a good day. Montgomery finds this almost appealing, and in his already fragile relationship and physical state, he starts visiting Olivia, and a slow relationship starts developing between the two.
The movie follows a span in the lifetime more than a specific story arc, even though there is a definite logic to where the story starts and ends. I say this because for about the final 45 minutes of the movie, I continuously kept feeling disappointed that the story was dragged on past certain points – feeling that this could be a logical and not at all bad place for the movie to end. The real ending seemed only trivially more like an ending than numerous points where I started readying myself to leave the cinema. Ben Foster and Woody Harrelson both give brilliant performances of imperfect men struggling with issues bigger than themselves, while Samantha Morton truly blends into the role of a mourning housewife and Jenna Malone likewise into one cause of Montgomery’s fragile state.
The movie, while dealing with a serious topic, felt like it gets sidelined by smaller issues a little too much, and none of these issues really drive a plot that keeps you at the edge of your chair. As you can imagine, a movie where you start expecting the end 45 minutes from the real end can start to feel extremely long-winded, and eventually even I started wishing for it to just end. Had this been a home movie, I seriously doubt that I would have even finished it. The Messenger is filled with underutilised and misdirected greatness, which just makes it all the more disappointing and, I have to say this, boring.
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