The Hurt Locker

[royalhunteer]

HURT LOCKER-2009-7/10-KATHERINE BIGELOW -DIRECTOR-*RENNER -A.MACKIE -G.PEARCE -R.FIENNES

----HUMAN CONDITION DESCRIBED BY A HARROWING HANDHELD WEBCAM-----------

Katheine BIGELOW opens her docu style-drama about the fatalistic Iraq war with a rather high handed quote which dictates mankind's addiction to A drug called war ,yet there is no mention that addiction is an affliction and can be cured in instances .

This though is a portrayal of mutilated bodies ,evaporating mortal living forms in sand which smokes and swirls around mists of blood and flesh that have littered iraq now for over 6 long years ,which is imbued with a certain ugly poetic quotient ,amongst explosives and gunfights staged in the ramshackle filthy slums of Baghdad [shot in jordan ],as an ace team of american OED servicemen ,PLAYED BY a trio of bomb specialist squad -James[RENNER] ,Sanborn[ANTHONY MACKIE] and Eldridge battle the randomly placed IEDS ,on roadsides ,abandoned bombed out ruins and litter heaps ,while the iraqi civilians silently and impassively observe the spectacle from their rooftops .

Guy Pearce makes a brief cameo in the opening sequence as it ends in tragic detail and than the narrative follows through in a well edited -handheld camera technique ,where we are taken through the harrowing experiences of the american trio .

As they tackle the bombs ,we also become implicitly aware of the flaws in the script ,where the leader james ,inexplicably wants to manually disarm IEDS [Internal EXPLOSIVE DEVICES ],though it is army policy to let the robot perform that task in 95% of cases,this obviously makes turgid drama but it is imprecise too and the security measures or protocols are butchered at times as ordinary taxi drivers drive into the middle of these forays inexplicably with intensive barricades ,he also takes ludicrous risks which would have ended his call of duty within days but than this is just a movie .

At times this is inadvertently absurd and at times as tackling a device in a car where there is hardly any suspense but rather a sense of futile boredom as you see the iraqis watching as zombies and making a video of the anecdote ,while the americans expose themselves like sitting ducks to any snipers ,it is never asserted whether the civilians are hostile or friendly or what they might deem of this circus in their backyards and doorsteps .

One gesture of friendship to Sanborn is rudely snubbed by the Afro-american who tells the Iraqi man to '**** off ',but James is rather diffident as he befriends a young guy who is allowed in the base to sell pirated dvds and play ball ,and is called Beckham which is the only lighter aspect of this dark and grim account .

Soon they are off to a patrol in the desert in shimmering golden sand dunes with panoramic shots ,and their first encounter is with a British patrol in plainclothes ,where Ralph Fiennes makes his special appearance and vanishes soon in the blink of an eye as an iraqi insurgent ambush ensues ,which is again staged with flaws as the Iraqis have no strategic sense compared to their entrapped American counterparts who shoot them down like pigeons and americans fail to call for air cover suppport for reasons known best to only miss bigelow .

Bigelow has tried her level best to devise an accurate account of a war which is not conventional neither patriotic but a mercenary misadventure ,but she is no KUBRICK ,and this is no FULL METAL JACKET ,where a harmonious balanced account of all the characters can be rendered in exquisite emotional and visual wizardry .

She meanders as she sends her leading man in an unforgivably unnecessy nocturnal adventure in the middle of nowhere in a hostile metropolis alone as he breaks into a private iraqi house against all rules in search of the murderers who have killed his soccer buddy and is than beaten out in a truly misdirected scene by an obese iraqi house-wife and than races back through teeming streets in a public disgrace to his base camp .

Yet she than stages a powerful sequence which redeems her and the movie where a hapless Iraqi citizen appears in a public square with a bomb soldered on him begging to be salvaged ,while the americans bicker as to whether he ought to be terminated or aided ,as the scene progresses you almost step into the shoes and soul of this iraqi man chanting the quran as he awaits his irrevocable fate and the tragedy that is iraq is reverberatingly captured in this haunting echo as he recites the quran .

this is rather an uneven movie ,very well acted and edited ,shot with precision in a neo-real mode with vicarious techniques where a controversial war and it's most vicious aspect of suicide and roadside bombs are explored in a sporadically affective sum of fears .

The fact remains that the portrayal of James and Sanborn as the two leads is also haunted by their own scepticism and frustration as they mock wrestle in their quarters and james loses control in a well directed sequence where he physically and verbally abuses his peer.

This is a true revelation of the ugly emotions evoked by war and one wishes miss Bigelow had dwelled more on this psychological aspect than the toys and devices that her camera follows while briefly lingering on the expressionless iraqi populace .

In one sequence a senior American officer fecilitates James on his skills, and demands imperiously to know the quantity of bombs he has tackled and how he has managed to survive .

The reply in so many words sums up the net affect -i cannot remember truly the number but the best way to defuse them is 'the safe way' .

I wish that miss Bigelow had not followed the 'safe' route of making a comfortable movie about a crucial subject and delved into some unknown territory in her iraqi expedition to visit and explore a place colloquially referred to by the yanks as the 'sandbox' ,where human blood and life are cheaper than the sand itself ,which is partially and equivocally explored here from a 'hollywood perspective' without describing the 'human condition' in it's vast scope, or it's perilous status in a contemporary global milieu , showcasing style over content in a semi-pretentious artistic movie to appeal to critics and their whims,with more than a fair share of narrative flaws in it's own internal logic .

[hawktheslayer]

Tipped be the main challenger for Avatar during the awards season, The Hurt Locker is a very different kettle of fish.
The movie follows the exploits of a three man bomb disposal squad in Iraq: In particular, the arrival and impact of a new Team Leader in the form of William James (played by Jeremy Renner – who looks like Eminem’s evil twin).
James replaces the previous leader, played in a blink and you’ll miss it cameo from Guy Pearce, who was killed in action. Naturally, he is different to his predecessor and this will take some adjustment from the other men – particularly when one of James’s main differences is an inclination to ignore protocol and get the unit into more and more dangerous situations.
As would be expected, the characters must have some journey of self discovery to go on, but this is handled with a subtlety and realism that enables it to avoid cliché.
The movie, excellently directed by Kathryn Bigelow, carries a documentary feel and the look, feel and sound of the locations provides a real insight into how things must be in Iraq. You can almost feel the stifling heat and the atmosphere of living on the edge, when any person on the street could be an insurgent.
The movie unfolds in an episodic way, which captures the nature of the unit having to go out day after day where no day will be the same as the last. Each episode provides a different aspect to the movie and its characters’ development. This lifts the film beyond a usual action followed by consequence format that can seem so contrived.
Bigelow ups the tension levels to edge of the seat stuff. Probably still best known for the excellent Point Break – even more excellent given the talents (or lack of) of the 3 main stars, Bigelow has stepped up a level here. Apparently, the film’s production rivals that of Apocalypse Now for length of film shot, but it retains an intimate portrait rather than an epic landscape of a movie.
Bigelow has also managed to get some excellent cameo appearances: The aforementioned Guy Pearce, Ralph Fiennes and David Morse. None of which seem to be mugging up to the camera in a “look who it is!” cameo performance. In fact, they could almost go unspotted as cameo appearances.
There is also excellent use made of a “back home” segment of the movie that creates a surreal feeling about being back home. In affect, we are so used to Iraq that to be “back home” is weird. This left me wondering how the three man squad would have coped individually when they did return home.
The movie left me wanting to know more and I felt like I didn’t want it to end.
My rating: 4/5

[horizonblind]

Jeff Bridges is one of the unsung heroes of cinema, he has a consistently explosive body of work and yet he is still to claim that ever so coveted little golden man Mr. Oscar. His new offering Crazy Heart is quite a demanding protagonistic turn, in that, it is through and through a solo performance despite tremendous support from the likes of Maggie Gyllenhaal, Bobby Duvall and a slightly suspicious Colin Farrell. This is not however the first, in that Bridges dominates the film and commands your attention in every scene, it is similar to previous roles such as ‘El Duderino’ from The Big Lebowski, ‘Jack Lucas’ in The Fisher King and more recently the wacky ‘Bill Jango’ in The Men Who Stare at Goats.

It is a directorial debut for Scott Cooper, who also co-wrote (adapted from a Thomas Cobbs novel of the same name) and produced the film, officially making him the man responsible behind the scenes, but yet in direction it is reminiscent to Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler, in that it wavers between deliberate dramatic amateurism to sophisticated polished exuberance, but it still loiters fluency enough in both its method and delivery to be voyeuristically satisfying. However the central character of this film is music (provided by Bridges, T-Bone Burnett, Ryan Bingham and Stephen Bruton) in that it brings method to bridges madness. The film perpetuates Bridges ‘Bad Blake’ character with such conviction that it is as if we were watching a real life bio-pic like Walk the Line.

The film follows Bridges washed up country n’ western ‘Bad Blake’ as he shuffles from one dead end ****hole to the other in the shadow of his once illustrious career. The plight of the fallen musician or artist has consistently been an enigmatic bemusement for film goers, as it manages to neatly package a broad tapestry of human emotions for our cogitative pleasures infused with a feral obsession with the illusive ‘creative one’. Furthermore, the film also obeys the cliché format of almost every fame – rags- back to fame story, in that ultimately the audience is given hope for our fateful protagonist.

Fear not though, as Crazy Heart never allows sentimentality to ever fully blossom, as it always sustains a firm grasp of realism in its misanthropic rhetoric. Jeff Bridges oozes coolness as always throughout, even when his acting abilities are at its most punctuated when he shows every vulnerability a man could put upon the metaphorical table, and yet the audience is fully emphatic until the end, whether ‘Bad Blake’ has collapsed in his own puke or is collecting an award.

Crazy Heart’s central pulse ultimately emanates not from its all star performances or dirty country music, but its demonstration in what makes us human, the true meanings of success and failures, what we learn from the ups and downs and what is fundamentally important in our lives. It could have so easily have been a recipe for a pretentious disaster or a Kris Kristofferson b-movie, and yet whether you’re a cowboy or a bank clerk, you’ll find a heart with this Oscar worthy tale.

[horizonblind]

If you have ever witnessed the depiction of war on celluloid before, you’ll appreciate that it can be an immense aesthetic undertaking, illustrating humanity in its most extreme state. One woman understands this perhaps more than any other man or film-maker, Kathryn Bigelow, who first demonstrated her cinematic abilities with the cult hit that was 1991’s Point Break and further cemented her reputation with the oddly hypnotizing 1995’s Strange Days and has since left behind such turkeys as 2002’s suspicious K-19: The Widowmaker and invented greener pastures with her 2009 ‘swan song’.

The Hurt Locker has since been nominated for nine academy awards including ‘best picture’ and ‘best director’, it began its awesome trajectory with the Venice Film Festival and secured world-wide attention with 2009’s Toronto’s International Film Festival and ever since, Bigelow’s investigation into the searing heat and darkness of modern warfare has perpetuated momentum and critical acclaim from every corner of the globe. The 21st century’s principal conflicts with the Middle East have risen as a worthy genre of film in its own right with notable depictions such as Robert Reford’s 2007 Lions for Lambs, Marc Foster’s 2007’s The Kite Runner, Stephen Gaghan’s 2005’s Syriana, Ari Folman’s 2008’s Waltz in Bashir, Ridley Scott’s 2001 Black Hawk Down, Paul Haggis’s 2007’s Valley of Elah, Peter Berg’s 2007’s The Kingdom and HBO’s 2008 epic production of Generation Kill.

However, no film or television so far has truly attempted to smash the politically correct boundaries of a post 9/11 state of mind other than ‘The Hurt Locker’. Bigelow has assembled a truly magnificent cast with the likes of Guy Pearce and Ralph Fiennes but most notably a career changing ,stand-out performance from Jeremy Renner as Sergeant William James, the team leader of the Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) unit in a post-invasion 2004 Iraq, where guerilla warfare of the most savage kind breeds. The film follows James and his team on their minute to minute attempts to try and assemble some order into a burnt land of chaos, risking their life with every breath as passing bullets, chemical weapons and explosions become as normal as passing traffic, where blood becomes sand as quick as you turn your head.

The films tag line is taken from war correspondent and journalist Chris Hedges 2002 best-seller ‘War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning’ in which he shouts "The rush of battle is a potent and often lethal addiction, for war is a drug." Bigelow’s film is an attempt to show this statement as fact, as she does a incredibly convincing job of it, The horrors of warfare have been digested by such great directors as Francis Ford Coppola, Oliver Stone, Stanley Kubrick, Michael Cimino and so on throughout the ages, but this is the first refreshing display that shows no mercy, ‘The Hurt Locker’ is brave, controversial, disgusting, savage, intelligent and is ultimately compelling. Furthermore, it has to its benefit a contemporary relevance within modern society as the Middle Eastern conflict is ongoing. If film is art and therefore art is an attempt of contemplation, this is Bigelow’s and with it the modern consciousnesses attempt to break free from the numbness and ineptitude of apathy, and an attempt to force us to deal with what we are seeing.

‘The Hurt Locker’ will not let you feel safe or comfortable for one second, it is devised to make you scared that humanity is capable of such things, and with its strong anchor in realism, the statements the film makes could not be more frighteningly relevant or potent. Jeremy Renner’s performance especially is Oscar- worthy, as he plays arguably the most audacious psycho in modern times or perhaps the most humane candidate in an unjust war, the decision lies with the viewer, but beware as ‘The Hurt Locker’ is designed to pack a punch, this isn’t your average Friday night flick, this is a exploration of evil, madness and the decline of civilization as we know it or perhaps of how it has always been.

[mikeyboy1]

Hi look I am know to this forum, but I need help, I watched the hurt locker after so many reviews said amazing blah blah, but my god what utter crap! I mean I saw more action in We Were Soldiers and I didn't get what all the hype was about and why this film was so special.
So please can somebody explain!

[Tiddler]

hey.. it's not really about action. ( new here too ! )

It's kind of about how putting someone in a situation where they could die at any point, repeatedly, causes them to learn to crave that danger, and how that environment, or any environment can change an otherwise rational family oriented person into a tool of war.

[Porkchopexpress]

It's fundamentally a character piece about Jeremy Renner's character and his total ambivalence to the jeopardy of his profession and his addiction to it.

I quite like it because it's not a political allegory or preachy film, it's about Renner and his own battles as his mask slips over the course of the film and a little light creeps into his soul as he hastily tries to paper the cracks.

Plus as thrillers go it can be, at its best, real nail biting stuff as the other members of his team panic and deal with their own demons, they mirror the audience reaction to Renner's care free approach to his job.

Half the time you almost want the bomb to go off in his face, which I quite like, because his character can be very unlike-able at times.

I identify most with the soldier who gets a round in the leg and basically tells Renner to go and fuck himself in the end.

Love him or hate him, it's an interesting character portrait, plus I like the fact 'The War' is just essentially background and the film makes no plodding political statements and just focuses on the triangle of the three soldiers.

It's pretty damn good, but it's not really a 'war film' in my opinion, comparing it to 'We Were Soldiers' is a bit ridiculous to be honest.

[JordyVerrill]

Mickeyboy, I agree, the film is very overated. I believe it sat on a shelf for a few years and I can see why.

I had no empathy for the main character who was a comic action hero stuck in a political drama. At was probably the worst year for oscars, it ended up the 'best film', or a safe choice as i see it. i.e. its about iraq (a hot topic), it was directed by a woman (for the pc brigagde) and most couldn't stomach avatar winning (which was directed by the ex husband, a bit of goss to keep the enews viewers interested).

I also didn't like no country for old men, american beauty or a wonderful mind, so what do i know...

[doller99]

Originally Posted by Tiddler

hey.. it's not really about action. ( new here too ! )

It's kind of about how putting someone in a situation where they could die at any point, repeatedly, causes them to learn to crave that danger, and how that environment, or any environment can change an otherwise rational family oriented person into a tool of war.

I totally agree with this guy.
This movie had been taken Oscar Award, as well as this is the most favorite movie ever. In this movie you came to know that how's a soldiers fight for their motherland in any condition.

[Jonesy]

It's not a film I'd watch more than once, but it's a decent one. The editing is particularly good (or lack of in some instances), allowing the tension to build excrutiatingly.