Format: Streaming video from Hoopla Digital on The Nook.
Sometimes, you just know you’re signing yourself up for a movie that’s going to make you want to sit in a dark room for a couple of hours. I knew The Messenger would at least be that in part. When your main character is a military veteran assigned to tell people about the death of a loved one in combat, there are going to be scenes that are ugly and painful and filled with the kind of thing that makes you wonder why the hell wars happen in the first place. For all that, The Messenger is not really an anti-war film, although there are certainly elements of that.
Staff Sergeant Will Montgomery (Ben Foster) has been wounded in Iraq and, having seen enough combat time, has been returned to the United States with a few months left on his tour. Rather than send him back into combat, he is given duties stateside including being assigned as a casualty notification officer. His job is, whenever called, to inform the next of kin of a soldier slain in the line of duty. He is specifically assigned to work with Captain Tony Stone (Woody Harrelson), a recovering alcoholic who has been working in casualty notification for too long.
