The Hurt Locker [Blu-ray]

 

 

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Iraq is the location, war the condition, and bomb disposal the situation, when the bomb disposal unit faces its last four weeks of a tour of duty. Already rocked by the loss of one their own, when Sgt James arrives, and turns out to be a reckless excitement junkie, the conflict and tension within the unit escalates, as the life and death stakes grow ever higher. Will someone crack, will someone die?

It's simply one of the most tense and gripping movies you'll see in this or any year. I recall, feeling the heat of the desert, and the tense feeling as if I was there about to be blown up, and I recall leaving the theater thinking would win the Oscar for Best Movie and Best Director. Then in December Avatar appeared.

A curious coincidence of these two movies is that James Cameron, Avatar and Titanic director was once married to Kathryn Bigelow director of Hurt Locker.

As of Feb 2, 2010. Hurt Locker has won 50 awards already, garnering widespread appreciation, and nominated for 9 Academy Awards, including the ones I mentioned, Best Director, Best Pictture, Best Original Screenplay, and also Best Cinematography, and Best Editing. Avatar also got nominated for 9 Academy Awards, and Inglourious Basterds for 8, rounding out the leaders of the pack.

March 11, 2010. I was as surprised as anyone when Hurt Locker won for both Best Picture, and Best Director, considering the staggering achievement of Avatar. David truly killed Goliath. In so doing Kathryn Bigelow has become the first woman to win for Best Director. I am glad for Hurt Locker but somewhat shocked that it defeated Avatar for both awards. Hurt Locker also won for Best Original Screenplay.

Hurt Locker achieved only a fraction of what Avatar achieved at the box office.

Although I could see its brilliance, it's not for everyone, it's realism may be too real for some people. It's certainly not a woman i would strongly recommend to my friends, unless perhaps they were into war movies. In fact, that is how I came to see it. Nevertheless, it successfully captures the tension of being in a war situation, and knowing your lie could end at any moment, while you a dangerous loose cannon in your unit. It's quite gripping in that respect.

So, if you like tense and gripping war movies, this may be the movie for you, I hope this was helpful.

Usually success is a combination of talent, hard work and luck. Then again, a movie like this gets the Best Picture Oscar and one can only wonder: did the members of the Academy vote FOR this movie or against James Cameron? Sure, his arrogance did not make things easy; then again, one should not underestimate envy and spite as human motivation.

Inaccuracies and obvious mistakes run rampant; the Saving Private Ryan -wannabe camera shakes you into nausea; the plot line is abandoned in the sand again and again and (what is worse) there is absolutely nothing waiting at the end. No catharsis, no message, no moral, no closure. Nothing.

Platoon defined the Vietnam war not only with its realism and its ability to paint all the shades of moral ambiguity but also because because it had the guts to send a clear political message. In dire contrast, THE HURT LOCKER offers only a deafening silence on all these aspects.
The movie presents this war, with some of the sacrifices and atrocities it entails, as inevitable and expected. Keep enlisting, keep fighting and keep dying for the corporations and the banks - but don't you dare speak your opinion on the matter. Its message is a cowardly "don't ask - and we are not going to tell you why either".
Because self-censorship is the worse kind of censorship, this is Hollywood at its worse.

A spineless pseudo-documentary masquerading as an art movie. A cowardly film trying to capitalize on the stories of brave men thrown into unwinnable war.

A film made by errand boys, sent by grocery clerks, to make sure the bill of blood is being paid in full. Again and again.

Pass. With extreme prejudice.

Can war be a drug ... a highly addictive drug? Does this drug distort the mind and twist it's judgements? Can it influence dangerous, even self-destructive, behaviour? What is exceptional bravery ... and what is true madness?

This stunning, electrifying movie directed to perfection by Kathryn Bigelow presents these questions, and more, and while it's a war movie it is not a yahoo blast-fest for the heavily browed. This is a very intelligent look at the human mind in situations of extreme, almost unimaginable and ceaseless danger. Like a lot of recent cinema "The Hurt Locker" is shot in such a way that it first appears as a documentary, christening the film's launch and colouring it's mood with an atmosphere of intense credibility and tension. And it never lets up right to the last second.

A troop of American soldiers in current-day Iraq have as their assignment, the detection and disarming of bombs, bombs that are everywhere ... in ditches, in piles of garbage, strapped to terrified civilians and dead children. It is extremely hot and these men don suits that are heavy and swelteringly claustrophobic in order to save people in a country that seems to have lost all sanity and reason. It is the story of the differing souls in a group and how they all respond to such oppressively omnipresent danger. It is also the story of their leader ( Jeremy Renner ) and how for him the experience of this type of war has become a kind of addiction. Putting himself at extreme risk, and the men of his troop, with capricious irresponsibiliy, at one point they actually consider killing him in a convenient "accident".

Eventually we see each man for who he is and a very human portrait unfolds of the troop and the psychologies that form the group identity. In this sort of situation there MUST be a unification of purpose and a sublimation of individuality or there will be tragedies. Yet their new leader seems to feel himself beyond that and takes on an almost messianic approach to their task and to how he leads his men. At first he seems invincible, though frighteningly driven to extreme risk-taking, repeatedly extricating himself from almost certain death over and over. Beyond the very real and constant danger in a country so utterly hostile to their very existence, these men now have to deal with an irrationally obsessed leader who puts his own personal satisfaction and vindication ahead of his own life, AND theirs.

And yet there are moments when our iron-man messiah shows himself to be all too human, especially when he develops an unlikely friendship with a local, streetwise, teenaged urchin who sells him DVD's. When the boy disappears and our leader is convinced he has seen his bloodied and mutilated body something breaks inside him and his very human passions come rushing out. In an AWOL desparate search for clues to the boys death and his killers whereabouts, our troop leader forces himself into the home of an Iraqi intellectual, gun bared. And yet, despite his crazed and threatening demeanor he is cautiously but graciously invited to sit down and have tea, thus lending moral ambiguity to a situation all too foolishly seen as being black and white.

The cast of largely unknown actors is a rigorously believable ensemble; totally credible and very three dimensional. They are not cliched, G.I. cutouts. They are all very real people. In fact, while this absolutely riveting and very human movie is about war, the occupation of Iraq, the clash of two cultures utterly foreign to each other, it is also about the human mind and soul. And it is fascinating how our souls defend themselves with bravado and a kind of willful blindness in the face of the rationally incomprhensible. Faced with such intense and relentless danger we act out our cultures with desparate vehemence as a way to give ourselves the certainty we need to stay sane. "The Hurt Locker begs the questions, "What price this sanity, and, when we are not 'at home' any more, what is real?"

An edge of your seat, hold your breath, thought provoking and deeply moving story that does not go where a lot of war movies have gone. There are no pat answers. There is no certainty. And the cost to the human mind and soul of being put into such extreme, almost insane situations is clearly layed out. One of the best war movies of recent times. Kudos to Bigelow.

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1.0 out of 5 stars Awful Just Awful
One of the worst movies i have ever seen. Terrible acting, awful story. Stay away from this flick. Maybe a Razzie Award Nominee, should not have been considered for an Academey... Read more

Published 17 months ago by B

2.0 out of 5 stars Love among bomb techs (EOD)
This movie is repetitive and boring. The same cowboy (Jeremy Renner) rushes in where wise men never tread to dismantle bombs, dismantle people, and dismantle our time. Read more

Published 22 months ago by bernie

1.0 out of 5 stars Boring
This is one of the most boring movies I've ever seen. Nothing happens. The characters are boring and the dialogue is bad. I wanted this movie to be good. I was so disappointed.

Published 22 months ago by Michael

3.0 out of 5 stars "Hurt Locker" bombs
I will not go into a "Cole's Notes" kind of review of the movie as others have done this. In my opinion, "Hurt Locker" was reasonably well done technically (hence the three stars... Read more

Published 24 months ago by mocha

5.0 out of 5 stars Really good show
The movie is excellent in that it really shows how some soldiers exceed in war but many soldiers can't handle it. Read more

Published on April 27 2010 by Mary Latusek

2.0 out of 5 stars We were disappointed
I suppose there is a message there, but we did not find it the type of entertainment we enjoy.

Published on April 19 2010 by J. Anderson

4.0 out of 5 stars Hurt Locker
Great movie but so different than Avatar and not even in the same category. Both should have won an Oscar, but was definitely not better than Avatar. Read more

Published on April 6 2010 by Michael Hamel

5.0 out of 5 stars The Hurt Locker
One should forget that this flic was produced on a shoe lace budget with nameless actors -until now. Read more

Published on Mar 20 2010 by Geoff B. Greene

5.0 out of 5 stars wow!
the most amazing best picture winner since "the sting" i give this movie 6 out of 5 stars. i was on the edge of my seat the entire movie. wow!

Published on Mar 15 2010 by Eldon Watson

5.0 out of 5 stars an eloquent poetic ballet
wow.just finished watching this film about an hour ago,and i'm still trying to put it into words.it's basically about an elite military bomb squad unit in Iraq,whose job is made... Read more

Published on Mar 7 2010 by falcon

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