THE HURT LOCKER (Kathryn Bigelow 2009)

[Chris Knipp]

Kathryn Bigelow: THE HURT LOCKER (2008)

Review by Chris Knipp

"The rush of battle is often a potent and lethal addiction, for war is a drug.”"--Chris Hedges.

(Also published on Cinescene (http://www.cinescene.com/reviews/hurtlocker.htm) .)

Already celebrated for its breathtaking realism in depicting soldiers and explosions, The Hurt Locker is being called "the best Iraq war movie," with the qualification that the genre has been weak and the public response weaker. This is Kathryn Bigelow all right: macho men in dazzling exploits, exhilarating and always a little terrifying to watch, with adrenalin and testosterone spurting off the screen. If war is a drug, this movie could give you a contact high. Bigelow was obviously born to make a war movie. The only question is why she took this long to do so. Writer Mark Boal led her into it. He embedded with a bomb squad in Iraq, and came back with remarkable stories and a character to hold them together. He's Staff Sergeant William James, who's what in the genteel days of The English Patient was more commonly called a "sapper," a combat engineer who specializes in demolitions, minefields, and the like. Bigelow wisely chose Jeremy Renner, an unknown and unglamorous actor, for this pleasingly enigmatic role of a man who may be closer to bombs and timers than to his own comrades.

The Hurt Locker (soldier slang for a real bad place) gives you immediacy and verite' soldier life, with the shaky digital camera and in-and-out zooms of the genre (the action is so good, we soon forget them, while in Brian De Palms's crude 2007 Redacted (http://www.filmwurld.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=18559#post18559), they grate all through). Such authenticity is achieved in Brit documentary filmmaker Nick Broomfield's more political, excellent, little seen, low-budget 2005 drama Battle for Haditha (http://www.filmwurld.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=20171) . It may not make his film unbiased, but Broomfield most notably gives more detail of the Iraqi P.O.V. -- using real Iraqis -- while Bigelow sticks to showing Iraqis as the American soldiers experience them -- an experience that turns out to be insane, paranoia-inducing, and scary. (In both movies one of the few friendly forms of contact is buying and selling pirated DVD's, the US soldiers buying, the Iraqis selling, and in both this contact becomes a key plot element.)

Obviously Bigelow also had a much bigger budget, the better to provide a wealth of spectacular explosions, essential (or justified anyway) since this is about a small team of three men whose main (but by no means only) job is to find and defuse improvised explosive devices (IED's), the DIY but sometimes highly ingenious signature weapons of the Iraqi insurgency. There is also a horrifying body bomb; a complicated and lethal car bomb in front of a UN building; a suicide bomber who has a change of heart (as in Hany Abu-Assad's 2005 Paradise Now (http://www.filmwurld.com/articles/features/nyff05/paradisenow.htm) ); and a hairy firefight with snipers (and a somewhat obtrusive cameo by Ralph Fiennes) out in the desert. Besides which the adrenalin-numbed Sergeant James independently gets himself and his two squad members, Sergeant JT Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and and Specialist Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty), into various private and probably unnecessary severe crap storms. All of this is staged with stunning accomplishment and a strong focus on character and the interactions, intense even when alienated, of these three men.

The movie takes no political stand, other than Hedges' "war is a drug." This is like the point of view of Andrew Swoford used for Sam Mendes' 2005 Jarhead (http://www.filmwurld.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1565) , which, however unsuccessful in some aspects and poorly received, conveys that soldiers don't question war because they're too busy doing dangerous jobs, or waiting and hoping to do them, and trying to stay alive till, God willing, their tour ends.

The Hurt Locker is episodic and cyclical. It ends where it begins, with the protagonist joining a new team of strangers for another tour. Thanks to Boal's writing, Bigelow's fine directing, and an excellent cast, the episodes never seem routine or repetitive. But if you emerge with a sense of numbing danger and pointlessness that may not be inappropriate. The only structure is the routine one of datelines saying how many days are left in Bravo company's tour. But this is a figure that, as Kimberly Peirce's Stop-Loss depicts, is often set back to start again.

The opening sequence, where James's predecessor is killed, leaving Eldridge and Sanborn in need of a new leader, is pretty obvious. It's so carefully set up you know what will happen. It's still excruciatingly tense, a textbook street IED diffusion job that conveys how terrified the two backup guys are and sets up what's to come. This is a team, with all three in radio contact and each with his function, Sanborn the lookout in charge of Eldridge, who's the guard. The street is surrounded with buildings and people and deep in unknowns. When James arrives shortly after his predecessor's body has been shipped home, he does a similar job, but it's all different.

First we don't feel the danger except by remembering the first sequence, because James is so immune to it. Sanborn and Eldridge are freaking out because James doesn't stay in touch with him when he's suited up dealing with the device. They feel lost. We realize that the three before were a great team and we sense the rage and abandonment of the killed team leader's bereaved mates. There's immediate intense conflict between Sanborn, an elegant, chiseled black man with extensive Intelligence experience, and the puffy-cheeked James whom Sanborn calls "redneck trailer trash" straight off to his face. These telegraphed macho conflicts, essential Bigelow, work because the jobs being done are all so convincingly and intensely depicted.

We also realize that though James may leave his men to fend for themselves and not follow the textbook, he's so brilliant at what he does it doesn't matter. Maybe detonating improvised bombs in a war zone is so risky only an insane daredevil can excel at it. Every time James goes out he knows his life is on the line, but he is not out to get killed. He knows (as he tells an officer who congratulates him for his greatest exploit, defusing the UN car bomb) the best way to defuse a bomb is "whatever way doesn't get you killed."

This movie is about the adrenalin rush of war but also about loving your work and doing it exceedingly well, and how that may hurt those around you but become your sole raison d'etre. James is one of those ace soldiers who is lost at home in a supermarket or in the nursery -- two somewhat heavy-handed scenes in one of the film's too few pauses for breath. The other notable one is when James and his team relax by listening to earsplitting music, getting blasted on whiskey, and beating up on each other. Thus they come to a kind of mute understanding. Eldridge is the bull-necked baby, whose sweetness allows him to voice the bitter message that this is meaningless and that he is going to die. Eldridge also declares that he will disappear and no one will care. Eldridge blames James for what goes wrong. Sanborn comes to admire him and wish he could do what James does. But nobody can do what James does. He's a "wild man," a trapeze artist flying without a net, a matador walking in for the kill of a nasty bull 365 days a year.

The apparent death of "Beckham," a boy DVD-seller with excellent, salty English whom James, himself father of a tiny boy, befriends, leads the protagonist on his own to do something as insane as any of his bomb diffusions: he forces the adult DVD seller to drive him to Beckham's hose, and he goes inside. It's a complete mistake, and how he gets back to base alive is a mystery, explainable only by his running very fast under cover of darkness in a black hoodie.

You'll have to see if the way we're left hanging becomes thought-provoking in a Brechtian way, or if you're just left limp and numb. Brilliant and intense as Kathryn Bigelow's film is, like a distillation over 127-minute distillation of the most intense moments of her best earlier films (like Near Dark and Point Blank fused), it lacks emotional depths, chiefly because the characters can't linger over any emotions and we don't get time to resonate with them.

James is a lovely creation, believable and intriguing in his opacity. The movie gets the American Iraq war soldier's sense of danger, of the routine hostility of the locals. A gang of little boys throw rocks at the crew's Humvee as if just playing. A man standing in a shop with a cell phone is an imminent danger. A housewife in a burqa attacks the invincible James in her house and he seems overwhelmed. Iraqis who're friendly are terrifying, and may be unhinged (and still dangerous) -- or daredevils, like James himself.

This is a great movie, and meaty stuff, but it still somehow leaves you empty. The other Iraq movies were cloying and had too much to say, but though a lack of preaching is one of The Hurt Locker's strengths, its focus on one man somehow doing a job isolated even from his own team fails to provide any larger context of the war or of the country. The director is so caught up in what she's doing that it's infectious, but the compelling intensity also represents a loss of perspective. Still, if there is any non-documentary Iraq war movie that's a must-see, this has got to be it, and it's by far the best thing the uneven but gifted Kathryn Bigelow has ever done. It's a game-changer, the new American war movie to beat.

_______________
This was the closing night film for the Film Comment Selects series at Lincoln Center March 5, 2009. In was introduced at Venice and Toronto in September 2008.

[oscar jubis]

THE HURT LOCKER: WAR WITHOUT POLITICS AND MORALITY
by Oscar Jubis

Director Kathryn Bigelow has expressed that it was important for her not to take a political stance in her film The Hurt Locker. She refers to the saying "there are no politics in the trenches" and explains she found it "important to look at the heroism of these men." She is referring to American soldiers in Iraq and more specifically, to the team assigned to the extremely dangerous task of disarming bombs. The script of the film was written by Mark Boal, a journalist who was imbedded with such a team in Iraq. He describes his aim as providing a "boots-on-the-ground experience." To a remarkable extent, Boal and Bigelow have realized their aspirations. The Hurt Locker is an experiential film that depicts with astounding technical prowess a number of extremely intense war situations. Most of these involve the handling of powerful exploding devices with the inherent suspense milked to maximum effect. Considering the film based on the requirements of the thriller genre, The Hurt Locker is a great movie.

(warning: spoilers)
As a drama involving soldiers at war, The Hurt Locker is somewhat less interesting. The film focuses primarily on the different reactions by three soldiers to the deadly risk characteristic of their missions. The film grants them a modicum of conflict and modest character arcs. For instance, Sanborn, the protocol-abiding Sergeant, goes through a change of heart regarding fathering a child. And gung-ho daredevil James returns to the States (to a baby son and ex-wife) and decides to enlist in yet another tour of duty. I presume that, had Bigelow and her producers wanted more substantial dramatic content, they would have hired a screenwriter to enrich Boal's material (as it was done for In the Valley of Elah, a film that uses Boal's journalistic writing as source material for the screenplay by Paul Haggis).

In view of the almost invariably laudatory critical responses to the film, the key question The Hurt Locker generates is: Can a great war movie avoid politics and morality? The answer implied by many of the reviews of the film appears to be "yes". Jonathan Rosenbaum's opinion is quite interesting. He is "tired of" those of us who believe Bigelow has made an apolitical film. He finds something allegorical in James' failure to notice or recognize Beckham greeting him after the kid was presumed dead. Rosenbaum states: "This kind of blindness surely implies something about American perceptions of the Iraqi people, the ones whom American soldiers have allegedly been fighting for." A friend of mine believes that the scene of James at the cereal aisle conveys not only his being out of place in our midst but also suggests that, in America, freedom means consumerist choice. Even if I was to adopt the perspective of Rosenbaum and my friend, these two scenes amount to too little, too late, too vague to suit me. I do not think it is good to divorce politics and morality from depictions of war for the purpose of entertainment. Perhaps The Hurt Locker is a great thriller but it is a mediocre war film.

[Chris Knipp]

Good talking points. Great thriller but mediocre war film, eh? Okay. That could be a discussion.

All I can say for sure, and I say it in spite of myself, is that it's a great movie. But the great Iraq war movie is something we're still waiting for. This is why I say the movie left me feeling empty. I can cite as reasons the lack of context and the generally narrow focus. If the great new American war movie is not a war movie, that would not be too surprising an irony.

Yes, risky to call this "apolitical". One does not need Rosenbaum to see that's a tricky issue. I said it "makes no political statement," which is different. I also point out that Bloomfield's Battle for Haditha is "more political," which is true for many reasons. The cliche is "there are no politics in foxholes," just as their "are no atheists" ditto. But soldiers aren't always in foxholes, are they? Even when Eldridge says this is crazy and useless and he's just going to get killed, he's taking a stand on the war, or rather against it -- or at least against his own involvement in it!

The Chris Hedges epigraph takes a strong if somewhat ambiguous stand on war in general. Hedges' book War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning describes the lure of conflict zones. If they lost that lure and men stopped being hooked on the rush they provide, they'd stop going to war, he argues. But if war is addictive, might it not also be sometimes necessary? And he acknowledges that war brings out the best in men as well as the worst. Nonetheless this is a very effective epigraph in focusing our sense of the movie and one very suited to Kathryn Bigelow's own knack at evoking macho adrenalin rushes.

The Hurt Locker is set off by the fact that a whole series of (American) message Iraq war films have all flopped in both senses (not counting Bloomfield's). I had hoped Kimberly Pierce's Stop-Loss would be a good compromise, mainstream exciting but with a political stand, but if flopped in both senses too.

You say that if Haggis or someone had been called in to rework the material from Mark Boal the movie would have had "more substantial dramatic content." Well, it has plenty of "dramatic content," as much as you'll ever get in a film. What it doesn't have is a broader context on the characters, the country, and the US role in Iraq. Even what this is, is not stated (war, conflict, delaying action, invasion). Context on the main character is lacking, the supermarket and nursery scenes of James "too little and too late." Yes, or at least just not done well enough, given how crucial they are since they are the only thing of that kind.

Context or content lacks notwithstanding, The Hurt Locker is quite rich in what to me seems believable detail, shot in Jordan (and some part in Kuwait?) but (I think) not shot using only Iraqis as Iraqis (as is Battle for Haditha). I have not seen any movie, documentary or drama, that conveys so clearly what it feels like to be an American soldier in the war zone in Iraq.

The "Beckham" issue is a knotty one. . .it can't be resolved, but it is a key focus for the mixture of ignorance and intimacy that is war contact.

________________________________


I got the names of Sanborn and Eldridge confused in my discussion -- sorry. I've corrected the error.

[oscar jubis]

*But Chris, how can it be a "great movie" if it left you "feeling empty"? Lack of context and narrow focus? Agreed.
*No doubt risky to use the term apolitical outright so I concluded by saying "too little, too late, too vague to suit me". In other words, it is about as apolitical as a film about men at war can possibly be in practice.
*Bigelow's knack for evoking macho adrenaline rushes? Precisely.
*I don't think any of the Iraq War fiction features is great, but a couple of them are good.
*Best Iraq-occupation fiction feature to date? I would have to say In The Valley of Elah.
*Best docu about what it's like to be a US soldier in Iraq? Without a doubt. It's Deborah Scranton's The War Tapes.
*Yes, the Becham "issue" is a knotty one. I'd like to watch the last scene in which the boy appears to gauge how James fails to acknowledge him.

[Chris Knipp]

How can it be a great movie and yet leave you feeling empty? Because I demand a lot of movies, more than this one provides, and because despite the brilliant recreation of the danger and intensity of Iraq war IED diffusion operations and the day to day soldier life and contact with locals, Bigelow's movie doesn't provide the context you get in 'Battle for Haditha,' or the more agenda-driven earlier films, which don't work, but at least have context. Nonetheless 'Hurt Locker's' realistic action sequences are brilliant, better than in any other Iraq war movie. An intense action sqquence is the essence of a good war movie. It is the heart of the powerful German anti-war film 'Die Brucke.' But of course that is superbly set up by the earlier establishing sequences providing context for each of the boy soldiers.

Of course some of the Iraq war features are good. Most of them focus too little on actual combat though. The favorable reviews are assuming this one is going to be more of a success with the public, whereas they pretty much all fizzled; I don't know if that is true as to 'Hurt Locker' box office. 'In the Valley of Elah,' which you've made clear you admire, has interesting content, but is a war-at-home movie, not like 'Hurt Locker' dealing with action in Iraq, and this is a big difference. Same thing with 'Stop-Loss', which had a brief combat sequence as a prologue, but focused 90 percent on war-at-home, perhaps more effectively than 'Valley of Elah,' but focusing on the Stop-Loss issue turned out to limit the scope of the film too much.

As for Beckham, Rosenbaum's analysis seems both obvious and in part dubious (though for all that still highly relevant). Since the matter of recognition is obscure, no matter how many times we watch sequences with Beckham and the boy body bomb sequence, we will not be able to draw conclusions.

Not that intention is the ultimate word on any art work, but this is a point where I'd like to know what Bigelow and Boal thought, how they see the whole Beckham story. And Beckham's odd final appearcnce.

[oscar jubis]

I would have to rewatch the last scene with Beckham before I say I cannot know with certainty whether James ignores him or fails to recognize him. When I watched the film I felt that James was willfully ignoring Beckham because he has now decided it is wise to maintain psychological distance from Iraquis. Because others interpret the scene differently, I'd like to open my mind to adopting another p.o.v. of the scene next time out. This film is going wide within days. I hope to hear from bon, Tab, and Johann.

[Chris Knipp]

I'd have to see it again too but as I said I don't think there will be any clear answer. My impression was that James has a lot on his mind, and though he doesn't seem to react or recognize Beckham, there would be many interpretations of what that means. We don’t know why James does not acknowledge the boy. And we do not know that the boy is Beckham. And of course we do not know lots of other things, such as whether the house James entered earlier in his "failed procedural" was the house of Beckham's family either. It has led to discussion elsewhere, e.g.:
In the warehouse, Sgt. James identifies the dead boy as Beckham, the kid who sells DVDs to soldiers at Camp Victory. Later a kid tries to solicit him to buy DVDs and play soccer.

I interpreted this as indicating that Beckham was alive all along, but James' paranoia got the better of him, causing him to misidentify the body. Wallie [another contributor to the blog] drew a different conclusion, that the boy who appears later is a different kid who replaced Beckham at the DVD stand.

James is the only one to ID the body (he's the only one who knows Beckham well enough to do so), so it has the same questionable legitimacy of any anecdote, which his teammates mention specifically. When the boy appears after the warehouse sequence, he singles out James from a group of soldiers and asks if he wants to buy DVDs or play soccer. Since Beckham is the only one to associate him with soccer (and has a financial incentive to do so), I don't see how it could've been another kid. Source: Jim Emerson's Scanners Blog (http://blogs.suntimes.com/scanners/2009/07/hurt_locker_georges_bataille_a.html) ("Jim Emerson's Scanners Blog").

Another poster (still on the Jim Emerson blog) argues that Beckham led James "to make some very bad, reckless, dangerous decisions. So, when Beckham reappears, he doesn't look at him. An 'Only Angels Have Wings' moment -- he's not going to get burned in the same place twice. It's best for his own survival, and for Beckham's." If, on the other hand, the argument advanced earlier on the blog by "Wallie" is correct, that the boy at the end is NOT Beckham but his replacement, that would show James simply knows Beckham beter than we do. Actually I was not quite sure the boy at the end looked exactly like Beckham, and he didn't use any spicy language.

Given all this confusion, Rosenbaum's conclusion that the Hurt Locker's "most courageous character" is so sanely "myopic" and convinced Bechham was kiled "by a terrorist" [sic] "he can’t even see the kid greeting him" [etc.], isn't justified by these incidents; they've obviously confusing to many viewers and we don't know if this confusion is intentional or accidental on the part of the filmmakers. This confusion to my mind is not a strength of the film by any means -- unless you take it as an apt illustration of the craziness of war.

[oscar jubis]

To reiterate:
I am 100% convinced the kid is Beckham. If alert and attentive viewers like yourself are not certain of this, then that would reflect poorly on Bigelow. I am convinced that James' non-response to Beckham's greeting is meant to mean something. My reading of what it means is contrary to Rosenbaum's. The fact that that's the only evidence JR provides of the film's "politics" makes for a disappointing "note" on the film. I consider James' non-response a willful act based on a reassesment of the way he should relate to Iraquis after his closeness to Beckham caused him to make a bad decision (like one "blogger" you quote says).

[Chris Knipp]

That makes sense. I think this reflects poorly on both Bigelow and Rosenbaum. Rosenbaum over-interprets the film as being a blunt indictment of its protagonist. He goes too far there; it's not meant that way. Meanwhile, Bigelow doesn't get this sequence across very clearly.

When James said the body bomb corpse was Beckham, I was doubtful because it was blood-covered and because it seemed bigger than Beckham. But due to James conviction, I was later convinced psychologically enough to be reluctant to recognize the boy at the end as the original Beckham. It's maddening! And these are key details that ought not be so unclear.

[oscar jubis]

Audiences still don't care to watch an Iraq-set war movie. The film had its number of screens slightly increased both this week and last week. However, the b.o. declined both weeks (by a third during this weekend).

[Chris Knipp]

Too bad. It's still an important movie. And Nick Broomfield's BATTLE FOR HADITHA, which nobody saw in US theaters, is an even more important one. Box office does not determine the importance.

[oscar jubis]

My post had nothing to do with the film being important or not. But if you want my opinion about that... The film did not strive to be "important" in any other way than showing how the job these soldiers are doing is quite dangerous. Its aim is to craft a thriller out of the risk involved. This very modest aim is realized to a great extent. Film was meant to entertain audiences who like action movies and don't think very hard and deep about society and politics. It still failed to persuade them to watch it despite what I thought was an adequate advertising campaign by the studio.

[Chris Knipp]

I think it's better than that.


Film was meant to entertain audiences who like action movies and don't think very hard and deep about society and politics. This is unfair and dismissive. So your point in coming back to report the decline in box office was to suggest Bigelow made a schlock apolitical war movie and it still didn't sell tickets? Oh. I see. Well, to my mind this is a pointless train of thought. It is a powerful, well made movie and it does have political implications and will be remembered, as many writers have concluded, when most of the other Iraq war movies are forgotten. I however would agree with you that it should have more context and more political savvy built into it, but such a dismissive description of what THE HURT LOCKER was "meant" to do is unjustified.

[oscar jubis]

At best, this film is pure bourgeois disavowal. At worst, it's war porno.

If we are to learn from our history we as human beings need to start by taking responsibility. Why is it that our media failed to inform us and search for the truth about Iraq's involvement in terrorism and WMDs? Why is it that we were so willing to believe the administration's lies? How did we allow ourselves to be deceived? Why is it that democracy in America remains so frustratingly imperfect? What is it that I could have done to change things? What can I do today to keep it from happening again? Certainly not overpraise technically accomplished films that exploit war situations for the provision of cheap thrills.

This is true to my experience and my thinking no matter how many film reviewers think this is the best that American cinema has to offer. Go ahead, give the damn, empty-headed flick an Oscar. I am prepared to accept that this is not only the movie reviewers' idea of a great movie, but also the Academy's.

[Chris Knipp]

Well, go ahead and sound off. But it is a better film than you are acknowledging. It does not have to protest about WMDs to be a valid depiction of the Iraq war experience. Your remarks are extraneous to the film. They are even extraneous to Battle for Haditha, which has much more political and cultural context. So while this is a perfectly valid expression of how you feel, it is not a useful discussion of The Hurt locker. Whether or not one likes this film, and I expressed the feeling of emptiness when it was over, it' remains "the most skillful and emotionally involving picture yet made about the conflict." And the way it captures the atmosphere in the urban front of the Iraq war, and the constant mutual distrust between American occupiers and Iraqi citizens in every scene, is remarkable and deserves mention when the year's best films are being listed. It's a powerful piece of work, and by no means one that falsifies the material it deals with in a falsely mesmerizing context as, for instance, Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter notoriously did.
Why is it that our media failed to inform us and search for the truth about Iraq's involvement in terrorism and WMDs? Why is it that we were so willing to believe the administration's lies? How did we allow ourselves to be deceived? These are valid and important questions, but they are not questions that need to be asked while depicting the combat in Iraq, and they are not questions that William James has time for when he is defusing IEDs. They are also not questions that specifically concern me, because I did not allow myself to be deceived for one minute.

[Johann]

If I could just interject here for a minute, I haven't seen the movie and I don't intend to but I wanted to say something about it.

My guess on why it's getting so much praise is because of it's accuracy in depicting the on-the-ground situation. Like Jarhead (another movie I'm not too fond of), it seems like just another exercise for a filmmaker to "make one for the troops", to illustrate the dangers and risks, to drive home how surreal and complex war can be.
I'm not taking anything away from the brave souls who dismantle bombs or clear mine fields or even patrol. But I fear that a film of this type does nothing for the country or the healing process of the common soldier who is affected. If I was an Army engineer and I saw this what else could I say about it, other than "They made a good movie about my job!" From where I sit, that's the extent of this movie's impact. What is Bigelow trying to do with this film? What is her "message"? Ignore the larger, more important issues in favor of focusing on the common soldier?
This film would be massively important if the basis for that war was justified. A man doing a life-threatening duty for his country in a very foreign country in a just war would be applauded very loudly by me.
Oscar has a very solid point.
As I say, I'm not dismissing the soldier here.
I want more focus on the causes of the war, the reasons for being there. The context is not to be ignored.
Is the issue of WMD's or lies or the media pounding the war drums even mentioned in the film?
Is this an "exclusive" picture?
If so then I have a big issue with it.
And that's why my radar has told me to avoid it.

[oscar jubis]

I think you are correct when you say that the "accuracy of depicting the on-the-ground situation" is a major reason why THL is getting so much praise, especially the most dangerous aspects of those situations. What this particular soldiers do is inherently courageous and suspenseful. It's hard to think of anyone but Bigelow getting more out of these set pieces.
If we go by Metacritic, THL is clearly the best reviewed movie of the year. It gets a score of 94. That's five points better than second best and my own favorite movie of the year, GOODBYE SOLO, which I've already seen four times.
I mention this because I agree with A.O. Scott when he writes:"If this is not the best action movie of the summer, I'll blow up my car."
In a way, the difference between my opinion and that of several critics is a matter of degree or a relatively minor perspective shift. CK's original review expresses a concern for lack of larger context on the war, for instance. Scott says that the focus on "moment to moment experience" is "a little evasive". To boil down my point to its essence, what Scott calls a little evasive, I call bourgeois disavowal. In other words, "a lot" evasive.
And without the needed context CK mentions, bomb-defusing for thrills becomes war porno as far as I am concerned.
I also think the film has some minor dramatic flaws including the handling of a scene involving an Iraqui boy.
But dear friend, I am obviously in the minority here and if at all inclined, you should see this movie.

[Chris Knipp]

In scanning this thread again four months or so later I find Oscar's derogatory subtitle, "War without politics or morality" and I'm bothered by it; this begins by overstating the case. The weakness of THE HURT LOCKER, as I keep saying, is that it doesn't set the events in a wider context, obviously. I keep referring to Bloomfield's THE BATTLE FOR HADITHA for comparison. Though made with less skill in making an action movie, the latter is a realistic depiction of some particulars of the Iraq war that gives more of a take on the war's contradictions and provides in-depth Iraqi characters as part of its story. It is true that THE HURT LOCKER lacks these. But to say it is a film that presents war "without politics or morality" is unfair.

The epigraph of THE HURT LOCKER in itself sets war in a moral context, one in which war is seen as an addiction, a drug, surely not a good way to go about righting a political situation. Oscar overstates the case without proof.
Scott says that the focus on "moment to moment experience" is "a little evasive". To boil down my point to its essence, what Scott calls a little evasive, I call bourgeois disavowal. In other words, "a lot" evasive. And without the needed context CK mentions, bomb-defusing for thrills becomes war porno as far as I am concerned. "A little evasive" is a subtle, measured remark. To say you "call" this "a lot evasive" is not an argument; one can call a film whatever one likes but where is the justification? I'm not quite sure what "bourgeois disavowal" means. What's "bourgeois" got to do with it? Is this to drop in a dash of Marxism? Is that needed to flavor the argument? But where is the argument? "A lot evasive." Why? What is the justification for turning up the volume of Scott's reasoned argument?
And without the needed context CK mentions, bomb-defusing for thrills becomes war porno as far as I am concerned. Again, this goes too far. Why does it become "war porno"? Those are strong words indeed. "Bomb-diffusing for thrills" distorts the film's own very specific context. The bomb-diffusing may be an adrenaline rush, because it's very dangerous, but it is not "for thrills." It's being done to save people's lives. it's important work. Bigelow and the film do not disregard that as these remarks imply.

When Johann says
My guess on why it's getting so much praise is because of it's accuracy in depicting the on-the-ground situation. -- that's part of it, but the other part is that this is a brilliantly made action movie. It does both things at once. There are plenty of action movies out there, but they don't provide an intensely accurate feel of dangerous work in the combat zone in Iraq. The combination of those two elements is what makes THE HURT LOCKER a remarkable film. Even masterpieces have shortcomings. But to call this war porn and "a lot evasive" and without politics and morality is both unfair and inaccurate. You have to recognize that this is a very remarkable film, even if you don't like it.

[Chris Knipp]

For example, I would have to list Cinimo's THE DEER HUNTER among the ten best American films of 1978, along withDe Palms's THE FURY, Reisz's WHO'LL STOP THE RAIN, and Carpenter's HALLOWEEN. I hate THE DEER HUNTER. It's pernicious and false, while THE HURT LOCKER is not false at all. The soldiers are like that and the war is like that. It's just myopic.

Hoberman lists those other three but not THE DEER HUNER, but that's arbitrary; THE DEER HUNTER has to be considered because of its influence whether one likes it or not. Though far more pernicious than THE HURT LOCKER, it's a brilliantly made film. That's why it can't be overlooked. You can't ignore something just because you don't like it or you don't think it's morally or politically correct.

[oscar jubis]

I already had things to say along the lines that the film is "brilliantly made" in my piece on page one of this thread. I have not "ignored" this film. I have seen it and written about it. Meaning and ideology are important to me. I cannot separate the skill shown in the making of film with what the film has to say, often by omission.

"The bomb-diffusing may be an adrenaline rush, because it's very dangerous, but it is not "for thrills." It's being done to save people's lives."(CK)
The re-enactment of the bomb-diffusing for Bigelow's camera to capture is done to provide thrills to an audience of filmgoers, not to save lives. That is the bomb-diffusing we are talking about here.

[Chris Knipp]

You say you can't separate the skill shown in making the film from what the film has to say. But now you want to separate the activity shown in the film from the film, and say that the work shown in it, which is serious work, done to save people's lives, must be distinguished from the film, and say that work is only shown to thrill people. But it doesn't work that way. The film shows and people respond to not just the thrill, but the nature of the work and its context. The film may not present the larger political context of the war as fully as we would like, but it does not tell its story just for thrills.

I understand your point of view, and it is not radically different from mine or A.O. Scott's about THE HURT LOCKER. But you have used exaggeration and oversimplification in your remarks that are troubling to me. And now you are imputing a sort of immorality in the filmmaker that is unjustified.

Perhaps a response to the case of THE DEER HUNTER that I brought up would have helped advance the discussion.

NB: A quote within a quote should use double and single quotation marks.

[oscar jubis]

I write here when I want to get away from the academic writing I do the rest of the day. I will restrain myself from giving you grammar/writing lessons if you promise to do the same. Deal?

We don't need to regurgitate the same arguments. I don't know how many times I have had to repeat that I think The Deer Hunter is racist and that it is fine with me if others don't agree with me.

[Chris Knipp]

I will restrain myself from giving you grammar/writing lessons if you promise to do the same. Deal?

No, no deal. I'm quite open to being edited or corrected. Everybody needs an editor.

I'm afraid we are both repeating ourselves on this. But I am convinced that something about your position is misguided, and I have hope that you will modify your position re THE HURT LOCKER.

Repeating that THE DEER HUNTER is racist is unnecessary. Did you even read what I said? That is exactly what I think. My argument is not to defend its ideas but to assert that certain works with pernicious viewpoints must still be considered artistically important and culturally significant, and ignoring them won't make them go away the way Hoberman does by not listing THE DEER HUNTER for 1978 when it was one of the most notable American films of that year. I know you won't want to turn away from Hoberman, but that is the point you need to reply to, not the issue, a given, that the movie is racist.

Anyway, even if you think I am repeating arguments and you feel compelled to repeat yours, other readers may be reawakened to the issues the movie raises and want to see it and that is a good thing.

[cinemabon]

In addition to being nominated for Best Picture (Golden Globe), in poll at Rottentomatoes.com, most readers nominated "The Hurt Locker" to win by landside.

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/avatar/news/1860545/awards_tour_2009_golden_globe_noms_here

[Chris Knipp]

Let's put this whole thing over in the Best Lists thread Oscar started with the Film Board of Reveiw early awards.

[tabuno]

I wanted to stop watching what I felt was a wrenched movie after about 80 minutes but forced myself to see it through like a good trooper but it didn't get that much better for me. Much of the movie was predictable and in many ways I felt overblown and almost fantastic in its plot points. I loved JARHEAD (2005) but this attempt to replicate the Iraqi military conflict was filled with stereotypes, disjointed editing, a lack of intelligible and lacked necessary background contexts, and even the acting was inconsistent not by the actors themselves but having to follow a script that sometimes really didn't seem to be authentic but dramatic devices for affect. Much like Helen (2009) shown at the Sundance Film Festival where the director/writer purportedly conducted her own research into depression but wasn't really able to successfully and authentically capture her experience on film, THE HURT LOCKER attempts to capture that feel but more than not I felt that it had a superficial gloss over a much more inconsistent and erratic plot outline that had huge holes in almost every scene. For me, this full feature film was almost a bomb that unfortunately exploded leaving me in shock by the end.