The Hurt Locker
Sunday, January 24th, 2010 at
11:32 am
Product Description
Studio: Uni Dist Corp. (summit) Release Date: 01/12/2010 Run time: 131 minutes Rating: RAmazon.com
The making of honest action movies has become so rare that Kathryn Bigelow’s magnificent The Hurt Locker was shown mostly in art cinemas rather than multiplexes. That’s fine; the picture is a work of art. But it also delivers more kinetic excitement, more breath-bating suspense, more putting-you-right-there in the danger zone than all the brain-dead, visua… More >>
Related posts
Filed under: Popular Gifts
Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!
Do Not Buy This Movie ! What a waste!! Three reasons to avoid this film: 1. It was directed by a clueless woman. 2. It only grossed 12 mil at the boxoffice and 3. The never fails, dead give-away for lame movies: The critics liked it. They could have been honest by putting those perennial losers Julia Roberts and Jennifer Anniston in camo bdu’s, surrounding them with the usual cadre of beta-males and having a good ” Hope and Change” cry-in under a humvee. If you’re looking for a good military/war action movie…this ain’t it. This chopped-up, silly and altogether useless story is an affront to every member of our heroic military. What else can you expect from hollywood. Three strikes…they’re out.
Rating: 1 / 5
Who ENJOYS movies like this? It’s no Strange Days (also by Bigelow), which was original and well-acted. Pretentious, dull, too long.
Rating: 1 / 5
Speechless! Tears flowing down my cheeks as the credits rolled! Could this cinematic MASTERPIECE have been made by someone from our own wretched planet? I think not. Kathryn Bigelow MUST have come to us from an extrasolar location, with directing talent dripping from her wings when she entered our atmosphere! As I watched The Hurt Locker, I kept thinking, “How can one director take so many individual segments of pure fiction and have the masses falling all over themselves with glowing admiration for the ‘authenticity’ of this film?” Just truly AMAZING! Most of the time even average buffoons who’ve never even been close to a war zone can smell a war movie’s fake and contrived nature…But not so with The Hurt Locker!
There are those who LOVE the Iraqi setting (but don’t tell them the movie wasn’t even filmed in Iraq, OK?). And this movie made me want to join the US Army! I mean, I’ve always liked shooting Barrett .50 cals in video games and Bigelow shows us you can be a “former intelligence” soldier, a current member of an elite EOD team and just pick up a spare Barrett M107 lying around and start picking off bad guys at nearly 1,000 meters…Even a MOVING target! And to think I’ve been wasting so much time at the range to improve my skills!?!
I was also unaware that the Army had relaxed their “rules” so much while in a war zone…Because Bigelow again shows us how you can sneak around in a hoodie, put a pistol to an Iraqi civilian’s temple and have him drive you all around Baghdad for FREE (well, like I said before, it’s not REALLY Baghdad you know). This has GOT to be saving our brave soldiers a small fortune in Taxi fares! And once you see a home you like, just hop out and walk right in to someone’s residence (weapon drawn) and have a look around. I’m sure they won’t mind if you take a few things with you before you casually stroll back to the gate of the Base (did I mention this is supposed to be a WAR ZONE Base?). Heck, you don’t even get in trouble anymore for leaving the base without a pass and you’ll be right back on the job the next day!
Don’t like the plywood nailed up over the windows? Just tear it down so you can enjoy a little sunshine with your mortar shrapnel! Bored? Just grab your buddies and hop in the Humvee and cruise around the beautiful Iraqi countryside (well, not really IRAQI countryside). I also like how you can be given orders to investigate an explosion, but you and your buddies can grab your assault rifles and start going through the city streets “looking for bad guys to blow away”…That’s sounds so much better than a stupid video game! Just grab your M4A1 and go hunting for LIVE targets!! I mean, you’re in a foreign country so nobody’s gonna care if you mow down a few of the locals in the dead of night for some cheap thrills, right? Bigelow shows us this is how our soldiers respond to orders in “THE NEW US ARMY”.
Bigelow made sure I was NEVER worried about the safety of this EOD Team! Sgt James, the lead bomb tech, is nothing short of a Superhero! He’s diffused, what, some 873 explosive devices? And he STILL has all of his digits? He also keeps a piece of each one under his bunk. (I hope I’m not being too picky here, but pieces of 873 bombs would probably take up HALF of the room these guys live in, don’t you think?) Sgt James doesn’t even CARE if he blows up! He walks up to a flaming car filled with live shells and casually uses ONE fire extinguisher to douse the flames in about 15 seconds. Then he removes ALL of his protective gear and begins grabbing the smoldering steel while slicing and ripping into the car’s interior with a pocket knife, not even concerned about triggering an explosion…And why should he be with 873 under his belt? He even stands in the center of a spider IED and yanks the wires right up out of the ground! He walks up to a potential car bomber and puts a pistol to his temple (he’s really good at that you know). He uses his x-ray vision to…Wait a minute. Sorry, that’s Superman isn’t it? In fact, the only time Sgt James fails to diffuse, none of his buddies are hurt. It’s the innocent psuedo-Iraqi guy who’s blown to smithereens!
This Sgt James guy don’t take nothing from nobody! When he gets tired of communicating with his team members, he just turns his radio off. He deploys a smoke grenade as a “distraction” so his team can’t watch him do his magic. Later, a couple of bad guys are carrying off his buddy and he just opens up on ALL of them with his trusty assault rifle! Of course his buddy takes one in the leg that shatters his femur, but he’ll be (kind of) up and walking in a few months…maybe. There’s no inquiry as to WHY his buddy is crawling around with one of Sgt James’ rounds in his leg. There’s no inquiry as to WHY they disobeyed orders and were doing a little recreational night hunting on the streets of Baghdad. I always thought they Court Martialed soldiers for stuff like that. Bigelow show us not anymore…This is “THE NEW US ARMY” where there’s no longer a need for any intrusive Chain of Command!
Finally, I’d always been led to believe that soldiers killed in war died horrible deaths. Silly me! Bigelow shows how today’s soldier can take a sniper bullet right through the chest and DIE in a beautiful 360 degree dive with a half-twist that looks like it was choreographed by none other than Paula Abdul herself…Simply a spiritual experience!!
Since I have no life to speak of, I must watch The Hurt Locker again and again and again just soaking in the awesome beauty and truth that allowed me to forget about my own pitiful life and instead transcend the Earthly boundaries that usually restrict mere mortals from becoming something much, much more…I only regret my mouse-induced failure to give this movie a full 5-stars on Amazon. If I blindly give everything I review 5-stars, then everyone will give me “helpful” votes and I’ll be invited to join the exclusive Amazon Vine community of reviewers. My mistake, huh?
Rating: 3 / 5
I am an Army EOD Technician and I took great offense to how we were portrayed in this movie. I have operational experience in Bosnia and Afghanistan. If I ever had an EOD team leader like SFC James I would have made it my mission in life to see that he was removed from the EOD program amd reduced in rank. Blatant disregard for safety and procedures will get you and your men killed very quickly. Let’s not even discuss the rediculous scenarios that these characters seemed to continually find themselves thrust into. Never would a lone EOD team venture into the field without some sort of security element or at least another EOD team truck to provide cover and assistance in the event of hostile action. I was actually angry during the entire length of this movie. EOD Technicians are some of the most highly trained military personnel in service and it was absolutely disrespectful to see them portrayed this way. I think that all military members should avoid this movie. I’d like to know who the military advisor to the film was so I could give them a piece of my mind too. THIS MOVIE SUCKS!
Rating: 1 / 5
“The Hurt Locker” begins when a U.S. army bomb technician is killed, and he is replaced by Staff Sergeant James, a reckless ex-Ranger for whom “war is a drug.” He is the anti-hero of Kathryn Bigelow’s film, a man so addicted to and absorbed with danger that he recklessly puts at risk his two teammates and cannot even talk to his wife. The man is in fact so narcissistic that he mistakenly identifies a young boy who is killed and turned into a human bomb as a boy he knows, and madly jumps alone into the dark night in search of the boy’s killers.
As a psychopath Sergeant James should have gotten his two teammates killed, but somehow he manages to save both. Specialist Eldridge becomes depressed and angry when he fails to shoot dead the man responsible for his sergeant’s death. He encourages his psychiatrist to visit the field, and the psychiatrist does, only to be blown away by an IED. On his last mission Eldridge is almost kidnapped by insurgents, but is saved by Sergeant James and Sergeant Sanborn. James shoots Eldridge’s foot, ending Eldridge’s tour. Eldridge understandably blames James’ reckless heroics for his plight, but if Eldridge had stayed in the battlefield he would have probably gone insane. And then there’s Sanborn, who as an intelligence officer turned bomb tech support thought he was like James, but James showed him that couldn’t possibly be true. In the end, when a bomb almost kills him, Sanborn decides he wants to live, and wants to finally hold a baby son in his hands.
When James is finally holding his baby son with his own hands, James can only tell him that he wasn’t meant to raise a family; in fact he was meant to do only one thing. The movie closes with James returning to Iraq, and heading to defuse a bomb by himself.
The movie has received much critical acclaim, and while there’s a striking ambiguity and ambivalence to the film that is rare in Hollywood it nevertheless is a shallow and predictable film. There’s a lot to commend about the film. The nameless faceless enemy that James and his team battle are everywhere and nowhere, and is an apt representation of the enemy that the Americans are facing in Iraq: against resourceful numerous phantoms the war is to survive, not to win. James is an interesting character, but he’s really underdeveloped, and we’re supposed to take his complexity at face value when the director works very little to develop his full complexity. The movie’s major limitation though is the hackneyed plot lines and story arcs that it follows.
In terms of an artistic documentation of the war as well as a parable into the horrors of war HBO’s “Generation Kill” is far more appealing. In the 7-part series a platoon of recon Marines is spearheading the invasion of Iraq. They are armed and ready to kill, but there’s a splendid innocence to them. They joke around easily, and they share a strong bond that only imminent danger could instill. The stupidity and arrogance of war and its planners soon overwhelm them, and by the end they’re fighting and bickering amongst themselves, questioning their very identity as American soldiers. The executive producers were the same team that created “The Wire,” and “Generation Kill” also had the same raw, gritty feel that made “The Wire” so compelling to watch.
Compared with “Generation Kill” Bigelow’s “The Hurt Locker” seems insincere and flawed.
Rating: 4 / 5