If you've been paying any attention to the news this past few days, then you know that last Thursday an Army psychiatrist fatally shot 12 people and wounded 31 at Fort Hood in Texas. Since the beginning of the Iraq invasion in 2003, 75 Fort Hood soldiers have killed themselves. Nine of them committed suicide this year. Moreover, Army suicides have increased by 37% since 2006. In light of recent events, the release of the film The Messenger, starring Ben Foster and Woody Harrelson, on November 13, could not be more timely.

Ben Foster stars as Staff Sergeant Will Montgomery in writer/director Oren Moverman's film, 'The Messenger'.

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The Messenger opens with Ben Foster (Pandorum, X-Men: The Last Stand, Alpha Dog) applying medicinal drops to one of his eyes. His character, Staff Sergeant Will Montgomery, has recently returned home from a tour of duty and one of his eyes was damaged during combat in Iraq. Other than a small scar beneath the eye, he shows no other outward physical injuries but, sullen and quick-tempered, he is deeply emotionally wounded by his war experience.

In the opening scene he meets with his ex-girlfriend, Kelly (Jena Malone), who has snuck away from her fiancé for a quick rendezvous with her old flame. "You don’t have to worry about me. The world is my oyster," he tells Kelly as she leaves. But his words are hollow bravado. Will is carrying a lot of emotional baggage. Not long after his recovery in the United States, Will is assigned to the Army’s Casualty Notification service. Along with Captain Tony Stone, played by Woody Harrelson (Zombieland, Natural Born Killers), it is his duty to stoically inform the families of soldiers that their loved ones have been killed in combat.

For Foster, the beauty of the script of The Messenger, written by Alessandro Camon and director Oren Moverman, is that it does not deal directly with combat but rather with its results. And even without its military context, Foster recognizes the script has powerful characters: "You can take the hat off the military, and then it is just about people trying to connect," he tells CinemaSpy. "From the beginning Oren and I weren’t interested in making another film about the war that showed a cowboy. We were trying to flesh out people, inside and out. We are all complicated and (my character) is coming into a very complicated situation. I suppose the easiest part was not apologizing for it. The hardest part was trying to get away from the subject, and just having the endurance to be with the other actors."
 
Toward the end of the film we learn that Will had contemplated suicide. The horrors that he had witnessed in combat made him question his desire to live. But a new day dawns and decides against leaping to his death. The film does not discuss whether or not Will underwent any kind of psychological evaluation to become part of a casualty notification team, and obliquely addresses the lack of post-trauma care that soldiers receive upon their return from a war zone.

"We’re so low on soldiers," Foster tells us. "Soldiers are trained to be soldiers. These warriors are trained to work through it, to get through it, to be stronger than anyone else, and there is a great stigma about acknowledging one’s own psychological landscape. They can lose a lot and they can go from being harassed, losing their jobs, which means losing their own self-respect. It is such a loaded subject."

"What I seem to understand," Foster continues, "and I am not over there right now, is that a lot of guys are trying to get out and a lot of guys are just trying to get through it. And there are psychological tests I am sure, but it is up to the soldier himself to be willing to discuss it, and ask for help, and where we are failing is waiting for the soldier to ask for help."