The Hurt Locker 2009
In a lot of action movies there is an exciting part towards the end where the hero has to defuse a bomb, usually with a timer, and he is barely able to do this at the last second. Usually that’s the climax of the movie. With The Hurt Locker that’s the whole movie. It focuses on a team of Explosive Ordnance Disposal experts in Iraq who are called in every day to defuse IED’s and other bombs. There is some other stuff thrown into the mix, but it is similar adrenaline-pumping stuff to keep you on the edge of your seat, as the team deals with long-range snipers or chases bad guys through an Iraqi neighborhood. Plus you get to know a little about the characters that make up the team. It seems similar to the Bourne movies where they have taken one exciting element of an action movie, the chase sequence, and made it the entire movie. There is something to be said for this type of filmmaking and The Hurt Locker earned an Oscar for Best Picture for doing it so well.
The only downside is that in order to pull all of this off, they had to deviate from how the Army really operates. These guys are taking chances that most soldiers wouldn’t be allowed to take and doing things that would be outside the scope of what most EOD teams would do in a given situation. The other 100,000 US soldiers in Iraq are pretty much ignored. I can see how soldiers might say it is unrealistic, but the tone is still right. You see why an Iraqi guy standing around can seem so dangerous and, if he has a cell phone or video camera, is an urgent threat. This is still a good depiction of the war in Iraq. I don’t mind giving this an A.
Written: 25 Apr 2010
Owned on: Blu-ray, Digital