The Messenger

After his return from Iraq, Will Montgomery, a U.S. Army staff sergeant on leave, finds that his girlfriend Kelly is engaged to another man. Before he is to be discharged, he is dispatched as a Casualty Notification along with Capt. Stone as his mentor. He is told of the importance of his task by Lieutenant Col. Dorsett as many have failed. Stone then relays the rules of telling next of kin of a tragedy. On the job, their first report to the family prompts the mother to slap Stone, as her family weeps over the loss of her son; a man named Dale Martin is angry when news of his son's death warrants no reason to him; a woman who secretly married an enlisted man without telling her father cries in his arms after learning of the man's death; a Mexican man who is told through a translator about the death of his daughter cries in front of his other child; and a woman named Olivia, is in considerably less pain after learning of her husband's death. Stone suspects it is due to her having an affair.