Review: The Messenger (15)***

“There’s no such thing as a satisfied customer,” says Woody Harrelson to Ben Foster as they head to another ordinary home to deliver the worst possible news.

Tony Stone (Harrelson) and Will Montgomery (Foster) are military men tasked with an impossible job: informing soldiers’ families their loved one has been killed. The war in question is in Iraq but it could be any conflict in any era. The emotional impact is just the same.

Bound by rules and distance, they conduct their duty in deliberately detached fashion. They stick rigidly to a pre-prepared script. It’s artificial sympathy versus genuine emotion. They’re on a production line of death. Hugs and kisses for the next-of-kin don’t enter into the equation. It’s procedure versus people.

Except neither of them can predict what happens when they visit another suburban home on another suburban street. Will is drawn to newly widowed Olivia (Samantha Morton) and takes to visiting, offering what support he can.

And as Will’s humanity breaks through the aloofness of the job, so the robotic Tony’s carefully constructed persona begins to crack.

From the similar narrow genre that gave us Francis Ford Coppola’s Gardens of Stone – James Caan is the grizzled career soldier who handles military funerals at Arlington National Cemetery – The Messenger is a quietly subversive anti-war movie.

Oren Moverman’s film is packed with superb performances, not least Harrelson (Oscar-nominated) as the officer who has found space in his head to deal with the complexities of the role he has reluctantly taken on. There is also solid work from Foster and Morton as the odd couple warily entering into a romance.But the picture’s emotional heart is given hoarse voice by Steve Buscemi. In a powerful cameo Buscemi’s anguished, disbelieving father attacks the bearers of sad news and later apologises. It’s a wholly plausible depiction of every parent’s nightmare, and beautifully presented.

Made in 2009 and delayed before release, The Messenger is a poignant, prescient and painfully relevant movie. Every soldier reaches a tipping point and The Messenger shows how these individuals find theirs. It is a harrowing story made all the more affecting because it is going on right now somewhere in today’s America – as well as rather closer to home.