Customer Reviews

The Hurt Locker [Blu-ray]

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This is excellent movie about a war that destroys everyone
especialy the military personnel and when it is over (?) no
one will be able to say we won. It was worthy of the 6
academp awards

The Hurt Locker takes you right into the team's battles and struggles with war and the effects it has on people's minds and bodies, a very good movie all around.

My son asked for this movie which he likes very much; we gave it to him as a Christmas present.

While set in Iraq, this is not a political film, it examines the psychology of men in danger, and how some
men become addicted to it.

Mostly critically lionized, but attacked by many, especially soldiers for being inaccurate.

I didn't take the film that literally, or think of it as documentary realism, but more a stylized almost poetic
look at the insanity of wars and what can happen to those caught up in them, much like 'Full Metal Jacket'.
This felt real on a meta level, not a literal one.

There were a few logic lapses that bugged me, and the impact emotionally is (by choice I felt) muted. It's
more a disturbing picture than a moving one.

But it made me think and made my heart race, and images and moments have stayed with me for a long time

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.

What a great movie, buy it for sure, won lots of awards, great action, awesome story. Very realistic. Love it

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.

One should forget that this flic was produced on a shoe lace budget with nameless actors -until now. A very deep and dark film which, when the moment allows itself, will prompt the viewer to reconsider "work today was butual."

Geoff

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 tougher because they are still very much in a combat situation.this a very powerful moving experience.riveting right to the last frame.nail biting suspense.great acting.sometimes the quite moments speak louder and more clearly than any words can.the movie is very well constructed.its all so eloquent,like a poem,a ballet.the running time may just be shy of one hundred and thirty minutes,but it sure doesn't feel that long.i could watch this film again without hesitation.war themed movies are not everyone's cup of tea obviously,but if you are a fan of the genre,you owe it to yourself to check this film out.i haven't seen a film this good in a long time.for me,The Hurt Locker is a 5/5

Here is a current film that offers the viewer one of the more enlightening and candid pictures of war at the street level. The place is Baghdad; the occasion is the tricky and dangerous defusing of IEDs (improvised explosive devices)and other ordnances; and the main characters are a team of highly-skilled American military bomblasters, clad in heavy gear and decked out in bomb suits, all dedicated to making the world a safer place to live. In the course of the story - one cycle or term of duty in perhaps the most dangerous spot on earth - the filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow brings together a number of very dicey, suspensed-filled scenes where this crew works feverishly to dismantle some very deadly and sophisticated explosives. The audience gets to go inside the minds of the master blaster, as he works alone to figure out the true shape of what he is up against, and his fellow blasters as they stand watch in hostile territory. To enforce the idea that this kind of armed combat is a solitary existence that grates both on the nerves and the mind, the director introduces a number of interesting techniques. First there is the cocooning effect of the master blaster inside a protective suit looking out through a small aperture at the world as he walks towards the bomb site. Then there is a sense of moving perspective as the camera angles change to accommodate different views of the same subject. Even the watchers have that unncanny feeling that they are being watched by sinister forces. While some of the actions of the bomb blasters seemed to be over the top, with a cowboy glibness about them, they are for a good reason. Who could survive in this God-forsaken, acrimonious environment if they weren't bereft of their feelings to start with. Defusing bombs becomes a personal challenge to survive and cheat death of its ultimate power; in other words a dangerous game. The problem remains that in playing the game of avoiding death under such harrowing circumstances - the distinct possibility of being vaporized - one stands to lose one's humanity or ability to relate to others outside the proverbially small band of brothers. At the end, the bomb blaster is seen walking automaton-style down the main street of some Baghdad suburb, wrapped up in a bomb suit, ready to start a new cycle of duty in the only job he has ever known. Great movie for those of us who love suspense and heavy action at the same time.