Here’s the pitch. After being injured in Iraq, Sgt. Will Montgomery (Ben Foster) is sent home and assigned to three months working on the Casualty Notification Team alongside seasoned partner Stone (Woody Harrelson.) Having experienced the unfathomable pain and tragedy of life in a warzone, he’s now forced to relay that pain to the families of dead soldiers, in a job where there’s “no such thing as a satisfied customer.”
It may not sound like a bundle of laughs but for the most part it works. The scenes in which Foster delivers the bad news are heart-rending, fascinating and realistically varied, thankfully avoiding the potential clichés of distraught widows sliding tearfully down walls. Steve Buscemi is haunting as a bereaved father who becomes violently angry towards Montgomery, while a sweetly vulnerable widow Olivia (the brilliant Samantha Morton) actually apologises to the men for how difficult their job must be.
Underlying these thought-provoking moments is the relationship between Foster and Harrelson. Here, the two leads are superb. Foster’s Montgomery is all potentially explosive anger and pain bubbling under a barely-maintained stoic exterior; his floundering approach to the work contrasts with Stone’s more cynical approach. A crude, skirt-chasing loser, Stone’s only source of pride is his ability to fulfil his morbid duty with a combination of strictly-scripted professionalism and gallows humour. But Harrelson also brings a palpable sense of loneliness and despair to his character, and he steals every scene he’s in.
The men’s growing friendship makes for some very moving moments, but director Oren Moverman’s failure to marshal the material effectively means that these scenes are flashes of brilliance in a somewhat muddled haze. Montgomery’s affair with his ex-girlfriend (Jena Malone) and his developing relationship with Olivia are intriguing, but remain underdeveloped as Malone and Morton are reduced to looking either disappointed or coy. Intercut with some predictable scenes the combination of humour, pathos and burgeoning romance never quite blends together, and is undermined by a far too tidy resolution.
That said, The Messenger’s brilliant premise and the flawless performances of the leads make it a worthy film, demonstrating that nothing’s fair in love and war.