Movie Review: The Hurt Locker

Tue Jul 21, 2009 at 08:45:00 AM EDT And now for something not-so-serious. I don't typically write book or movie reviews, but after this weekend, I really felt compelled to. This movie just stuck in my craw. But take heed: This is a review for military people. So if you've never been in the military or never been to Iraq, just stop reading this. Because if you keep reading, I'll probably ruin what could be a pretty good action flick for you.

The Hurt Locker is a high-tension, well-made, action movie that will certainly keep most viewers on the edges of their seats. But if you know anything about the Army, or about operations or life in Iraq, you'll be so distracted by the nonsensical sequences and plot twists that it will ruin the movie for you. It certainly did for me.

To say that the scenes in this movie were "tactically unrealistic" wouldn't even begin to describe it. I imagine they probably had terribly frustrated military consultants on set. You could tell they tried, but the director was like, "Nah, let's have the three EOD guys split up alone and go chasing bad guys at night through city streets. People will love it!" And the military consultants probably just rolled their eyes.

But let me first set the stage here: This movie is about the addictive adrenaline rush of combat--how it fuels the soldier and how, like any drug, it can be fatal. Okay, I got that. No problem there. And as the vehicle for this type of adrenaline junkie, the writers chose to make it about an explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) team--and one team member in particular. Now that's a stressful job, so I have no problem with that plot scenario, either. Should be interesting.

But here's where the problems start. Because the script writers were, for lack of a better term, lazy, they couldn't formulate a story tying the adrenaline rush of combat to the actual job of your average EOD soldier in Iraq. So they decided instead to make a movie about an EOD/Ranger/sniper/commando/hero guy and his two sidekicks. Who apparently don't have access to radios. And who travel around Iraq by themselves. In fact, most of the scenes rely on oddly and unrealistically contrived situations to induce a stressful reaction from the audience.

And whether you're writing a screenplay or a book, this is a lazy technique. It's hard to create stress by developing a character's personality so intricately that the audience is actually gripped by a decision the character must make with regard to, say, suicide. On the other hand, it's easy to create stress by strapping a bomb to a guy, locking him in a metal cage/harness with multiple heavy-duty padlocks and placing a timer on it set to expire in two minutes. As exhibited in The Hurt Locker, this is especially effective when the EOD tech arrives on the scene with bolt cutters that don't work. Panic ensues.

But ultimately, the former technique is reflective of some great movies that stay with you. The latter is a cheap thrill you'll forget about by Monday morning.

So, without giving away too many scenes, let's just suffice it to say, in real life, EOD techs don't conduct dangerous missions as autonomous three-man teams without communications gear. They don't typically carjack Iraqi VCD sellers with a 9mm while wearing civilian clothes, either. While on Camp Victory. And even if they did, they wouldn't be driven off base by the Iraqi and dropped off at another Iraqi family's house, at which time they hop a wall, enter an unlocked door, get into an altercation, flee the scene, and run through an Iraqi city attempting to make it back to the base.

That typically doesn't happen. Another thing you'll rarely hear in combat is an EOD E-7 suggesting to two or three of his guys that they leave the scene of an explosion in an Iraqi city by saying: "C'mon, let's split up. We can cover more ground that way." But you'll hear it in The Hurt Locker.

Reading all the positive reviews for this movie, I really had high hopes for it. But I just couldn't get past uber-fictional portrayal of life in combat in Iraq. If you can, more power to you. Enjoy the movie. It's definitely not boring. As rendered, however, it's no Full Metal Jacket, Jarhead, or even The Longest Day.

Oh, and one last complaint: If you've already watched the movie and thought you were seeing things, yes, those were actually Vietnam-era UH-1 Huey helicopters they were using for the casualty evacuation scene.

I saw "HURT LOCKER", yesterday and concur with VetVoice review of the movie.

It is a good action movie for guys, but for those that have been in the military and worked in specialized units such as EOD it is laughable. I like the films of actor David Morse who was "Colonel Reed" in the film. I have known a few officers that would fit the role of Col. Reed though.

TRAILER: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GxSDZc8etg

About by: VetVoice Wed Oct 31, 2007 at 13:39:46 PM EDT

VetVoice is the online home of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. It is for Active Duty, Reserve, and National Guard members, as well as for veterans, their families, and their supporters. VetVoice is where we can come together to sound off on the issues that concern all of us.

VetVoice aims to be a nexus for information and opinion on war news, war politics, deployments, optempo, veterans' issues, troops' families' issues, and more.

I saw it yesterday. I did four years of peace-time with the US Army, so I can’t possibly compare it with “being there.” Overall, I’d give the movie a highly favorable review. One of the best I’ve seen in a long time. Easily the best of the summer.

I did a little search for info about the movie and there are a few interesting items folks might like to know. The movie was directed by Kathryn Bigellow, who also did K-19: The Widow Maker, a movie starring Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson about the Soviet Unions first nuclear submarine. (Personally, I enjoyed that one, too.) The script was written by Mark Boal, who was an imbedded war-correspondent in Iraq. As a result, the characters and situations are a composite of many that Mark encountered in Iraq.

Let me address a few situations found in the movie. I’ll do my best not to give anything away.

There is a situation where three soldiers do go charging into the night to try to catch some bomb-makers. As pointed out, that’s a pretty stupid thing for anyone to do in an unfriendly country. At the very best, one man doesn’t have buddy if they ever split up. In the movie, one of three soldiers _does_ point out that what they are about to do is patently stupid and there is a platoon’s worth of infantry to support them. But they do it any. There’s is a cost to that decision: a predictable and expected one that the film _nearly_ pays. But even so, that decision still has repercussions for the three soldiers.

The EOD team in the film _does_ have radios and two men use theirs constantly to talk to each other and to a third man who often ignores it, or takes it off, or simply can’t stop what he’s doing to reply. So the soldiers are doing what they’re supposed to be doing but one soldier isn’t being a good team player when he could and should be. That isn’t the case in every scene in the movie. As it goes on, they do settle into something of a groove but one of the soldiers is definitely a “wild man.”

One of the best scenes in the movie does revolve around a sniper duel. What I liked about that scene is that the team _did_ communicate and work together and used a bit of yankee technology that the enemy didn’t have to even the odds. But it still took some 360 surveillance with the Mark 1 Eyeball to bring the scene to a close.

I don’t think the movie made the EOD team out to be super-heroes. They did compress their time together and they probably saw a ton of action for the one month the film covered. There are some highly improbable situations and resolutions but I don’t think any of them come off as typical “Hollywood.” The characters often say to each other, roughly, “This is a stupid thing to do” before doing something. Or saying “That wasn’t a smart thing to do” shortly afterwards.

I also liked that movie is almost entirely about enlisted soldiers. A few officers are in the film, but they don’t carry it the way they do in most war films. As mentioned, politics are almost entirely out of it. Overall, you get the impression that no matter who you are or what you do, if you’re in the armed forces serving overseas, you have a tough, dangerous job.

Finally, I would say that the opening scene of the film shows everyone doing their job the way they would in real-life. The team uses every tool in its kit to get the job done and takes no unnecessary risks in solving the problem. Maybe it would have been enough to focus on that particular team for the film. If the film were a documentary and not a movie, I’m almost certain that that’s the team we would have watched for two hours.

It’s a tense film that spotlights a role that folks don’t hear much about. I recommend that folks see it in the theaters if they can. Or catch it on DVD of it when you get a chance.

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