Even if you liked "Crash" and thought the motion picture academy did the right thing by honoring it as best picture, you'd probably concede that subtlety wasn't one of its strengths. Writer-director Paul Haggis seems to view filmmaking as an obligation to teach, and his stories (or "fables," as he calls them) play as calculated civics lessons with obvious plotting and amped-up melodrama.

But they do um make us think, provided, of course, that you're the kind of person who doesn't put much energy into musing over the finer points of human existence in the first place.

Haggis' latest, "In the Valley of Elah," is less tolerable than "Crash," if only because of its plodding pace and surplus of subplots. Again, in "Elah," the symbolism is heavy, the characters are archetypes, and the Message is Important to the point of distraction. The movie is saved, somewhat, by the knitted brow of Tommy Lee Jones, whose wounded detachment keeps the film from collapsing under the weight of its own self-seriousness.

Jones plays Hank Deerfield, a Vietnam vet searching for his son, Mike (Jonathan Tucker), who has gone AWOL after returning from a tour in Iraq. Hank is an old-school spit-shoe-shining, crease-in-the-pants patriot who, driving out of town, berates a school janitor for raising and hanging the American flag upside down. (Ignorant foreigner.)

"That's an international distress symbol," Hank barks. "It means comes save our (butt) because we can't save ourselves."

From that scene, where do you think Haggis is heading? If your answer involves post-traumatic stress disorder, bigotry and Abu Ghraib, American-style torture, you're on the right track. And, yes, that upside-down flag will be making a groan-inducing reappearance at the end of the movie.

Just as every Los Angeles resident harbored blatant racism in "Crash," every American soldier in "Elah" comes back from Iraq dehumanized, addicted to drugs and capable of inflicting savage barbarity at the drop of a hat. Hank's investigation, aided by a local detective (Charlize Theron), is full of obvious diversions - too many. The film runs two hours but feels like three.

Hats off to Haggis for attempting to call for accountability in what we (the people) ask our troops to do.

But the simple-minded "Elah" doesn't do veterans any favors, either. It is Hollywood liberalism at its worst, divorced from complexity and wallowing in self-importance.

If there was a symbol for cinematic distress, it would be raised in front of any theater playing this movie.

Glenn Whipp, (818) 713-3672 glenn.whipp@dailynews.com

IN THE VALLEY OF ELAH 

>R: violence, language, sex, nudity.
>Starring: Tommy Lee Jones, Susan Sarandon, Charlize Theron.
>Director: Paul Haggis.
>Playing: ArcLight in Hollywood; the Landmark in West Los Angeles.
>Running time: 2 hr.
>Playing: Area wide.
>In a nutshell: Another civics lesson from Haggis made barely tolerable by Jones' wounded detachment.