It is amazing how one line can destroy a movie character for me completely & utterly. When Woody Harrelson’s character complains that the current Iraq War has no outlet for sex like prior conflicts such as Bosnia & Herzegovina, where brothels were filled with sex trafficked teens from other countries and Muslim women captured in the conflict, it illustrates how a movie that worked really hard & mostly succeeds in capturing the reality of war—anger & mourning for those left behind and broken men trying to rebuild their lives away from the battlefield–ultimately failed by briefly falling into traditional war time tropes to fill the holes between reality & shatters all the work that preceded it. There are some brilliant moments in The Messenger, but really needs a French director to not shy from simply telling a story about wartime death & its effect on people.