"The Hurt Locker" Update: My Review

[Texas Star]

THE FOLLOWING WILL REVEAL SOME PLOT INFO

I rented this movie, and decided not to buy, but it is an intense drama that details the emotional toll on men doing EOD work in a Muslim nation. Spectators film them defusing bombs, hoping they'll explode and they'll have some good footage for their TV and their memories.

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One Al-Queda jerk used a cell phone to blow up a bomb, killing the predecessor to the hero. One scene that I won't describe in detail showed how terrorists plant bombs in the bodies of children whom they've tortured to death for associating with Americans.​

You will feel strongly about this movie, and it will take the naiviety from you. You will see true evil walk, and not the sort seen in horror films. And you will understand why many vets have delayed stress syndrome.​

One scene that really made me sad was where the hero was home on leave, and tried to tell his girlfriend about his job and she just handed him some carrots to slice, not paying attention to what he wanted to share, to get it out of his system. The condescending psychiatrist who was supposed to counsel him broke down in tears after going on a mission with the EOD team and seeing their colonel blown to smithereens in front of them, by an IED. He found that the stress was beyond his ability to cope.​

It has one or two unrealistic scenes. One was when the hero led his three-man unit after some terrorists that he thought had sent in a human bomb that killed and wounded many people. I understand his thirst for personal vengence, but they had three platoons of infantry ready to undertake that mission, and they (the EOD men) were not enough on their own. That bit of vanity cost one soldier a shattered leg. The hero was too much of a showman.​

Watch this if you have a strong stomach, and realize that stuff like this still happens, although more now in Afghanistan than in Iraq. But you may have trouble sleeping after.​

Be aware that strong language is prevalent, although in context. It is just the speech of these men, not intended to get teens in the audience to giggle over hearing something forbiddden.​

The Hurt Locker is a powerful movie, with a message. It is not for everyone.​

I personally don't like some of it as well as I did, Blackhawk Down, or, especially, We Were Soldiers. It is not a sweeping epic, like, Patton. But, by golly, it deserved its awards and critical acclaim. It is a raw, real look into the lives of men who risk their lives daily that others may live.​

And when you've seen the enemy that we face in this war, you may feel like cheering every time you hear on the news that a predator drone has fired a missle into a vehicle containing some Jihadist bigwig hiding across the Pakistani border. ​

If any of you see it, post what you think of it. I'm really curious.​

I know that some of you posted not too long ago when I asked about the film. Is this review accurate, do you think, in your view?​

T-Star​

 

[sigp220.45]

I enjoyed it, too, and felt it was worthy of its Oscar win.

My favorite scene, though, doesn't have a hint of violence in it. Its when the hero is home and his wife sends him into the breakfast aisle in the supermarket to pick some cereal. The way he stands there, overwhelmed by the simple task, is telling. Not long after, he's back in his element, strutting jauntily toward possible destruction in his big green bomb suit.

 

[hberttmank]

I liked it. One of the better war movies.

 

[reddogge]

I saw it a year or so ago and liked it very much. I did get very nervous when the one guy finds a wire in the sand and starts pulling and up come a network of wires all attached to bombs and he keeps pulling them up.

 

[stantheman86]

As an Iraq 11B vet , I thought it was somewhat realistic, but the part where these 3 guys go on that "rogue mission" on their own, and the Spc. gets shot, and all that, and then nothing happens to the two other guys afterwards, is pure nonsense. Those guys would have been facing serious charges for just going off on their own, and that leading to a soldier getting wounded. Also when Jeremy Renner just decides to go solo, carjacking that guy, and walking around Iraq like it's no big deal and just going into that guys house, again, more pure nonsense. And then he comes back to the FOB and he said he was at a brothel and the gate guard is like "tell me where it's at".......Hollywood Bull-Hockey right there.

They got the scenery and the "feel" right, enough so that for a few minutes here and there, during the movie it put my mind back to when I was there, just from seeing some of the scenes........like when the Spc. sees the guy taping from the roof, and just the way everything looked. That was pretty dead on.

The whole scene where they stumble onto those Blackwater or whoever guys, and then the epic sniper battle with the Barrett .50 was a little farfetched. I wasn't an EOD guy, but US Soldiers don't just jump in a Humvee and just drive around Iraq willy-nilly just looking to see what they can get into, and then none of them radios for help, or close air support, or anything, they just get involved in a firefight with these Blackwater guys getting killed and then just leave like nothing happened, and nothing more is ever said about it......

Like was said above, I can relate to the scene where he's dumbfounded just trying to buy cereal at the grocery store. I remember being in Wal-Mart like 3 days after I got back and I darn near had a full blown panic attack waiting in line.

Hollywood poetic license is just the way it has to be, I guess. 99% of people don't pay to see a movie to see it be totally realistic, there has to be some drama, some impossibly inaccurate action scenes and whatever else.

 

[Malysh]

As an Iraq 11B vet , I thought it was somewhat realistic, but the part where these 3 guys go on that "rogue mission" on their own, and the Spc. gets shot, and all that, and then nothing happens to the two other guys afterwards, is pure nonsense. Those guys would have been facing serious charges for just going off on their own, and that leading to a soldier getting wounded. Also when Jeremy Renner just decides to go solo, carjacking that guy, and walking around Iraq like it's no big deal and just going into that guys house, again, more pure nonsense. And then he comes back to the FOB and he said he was at a brothel and the gate guard is like "tell me where it's at".......Hollywood Bull-Hockey right there.

They got the scenery and the "feel" right, enough so that for a few minutes here and there, during the movie it put my mind back to when I was there, just from seeing some of the scenes........like when the Spc. sees the guy taping from the roof, and just the way everything looked. That was pretty dead on.

The whole scene where they stumble onto those Blackwater or whoever guys, and then the epic sniper battle with the Barrett .50 was a little farfetched. I wasn't an EOD guy, but US Soldiers don't just jump in a Humvee and just drive around Iraq willy-nilly just looking to see what they can get into, and then none of them radios for help, or close air support, or anything, they just get involved in a firefight with these Blackwater guys getting killed and then just leave like nothing happened, and nothing more is ever said about it......

Like was said above, I can relate to the scene where he's dumbfounded just trying to buy cereal at the grocery store. I remember being in Wal-Mart like 3 days after I got back and I darn near had a full blown panic attack waiting in line.

Hollywood poetic license is just the way it has to be, I guess. 99% of people don't pay to see a movie to see it be totally realistic, there has to be some drama, some impossibly inaccurate action scenes and whatever else.

Thank you for stating your views! I don't care for all that Hollywood hype in movies. The lead character of this movie would be taken off that EOD squad so fast it would have made his head spin. He put himself and everybody around him in unnecessary and wanton danger. He was a loose canon. His Skipper (CO) would never had allowed it and his squad mates would not have tolerated it either.

Read the highly negative comments from veterans about this movie's innacuracies in Wikepedia and other sources.

My view, not anyone else's - I found this to be a mediocre drama that was not worthy of any awards.
Hollywood just didn't want to give James Cameron (Semper Fi!) another Best Picture Oscar, so they gave the award to his 3rd ex-wife to stick it to Cameron. K. Bigelow the director, was the first woman director to win Best Picture in the the history of the Oscars. I find it sad they picked this movie to make that distinction when I think of the great movies I've seen that had woman directors. Penny Marshall's "Big" and "A League of Their Own" comes to mind. But they were comedies, which seldom win such awards.
Even if one does not care for "Avatar" and science fiction movies, it was a technological and cinematic achievement that " The Hurt Locker"s Bigelow didn't even come close to.

Like Wash. D.C., Hollywood's politics were at work with that award.

 

[Texas Star]

I guess those guys with the Barrett .50 could be contractors, but I had the impression that they were SAS.

It looks like something they'd do, and have. Contractors out alone in vehicles like that seems unwise and too dangerous.

The British accents also make it more likely that they were SAS.

My son dealt with some of them in Iraq, and was both a US soldier and later a contractor. He had a lot of respect for the SAS, and they've been operating in Middle East environments for a long time. Posing as Arabs is something they do well.

But it was odd that no one seemed to be able to get air support or artillery fire on the hostiles. I couldn't make out what the British guy was told when he asked for air cover.

T-Star

 

[stantheman86]

Still to this day the most realistic war film I've seen was "Platoon". Even though it's set in Vietnam, a lot of what goes on still applies today. I must have seen it 100 times, it moved me when I was a kid and still does today. It's probably one of the subconscious things that inspired me to join the active duty Army as an 11B. Just like Pvt. Taylor, I "just wanted to do my part". I will always have a strong connection to the movie Platoon, it's one of my all time favorites, I own 4 copies of it on Blu-Ray and 2 more on regular DVD, just in case I need "backups" =)

I could relate to all of it during my tour overseas...... the "politics", the cliques, the inept leadership, confusion,crazy NCO's, ineffective NCO's,incompetent Officers, glory seekers, brown nosers, idiots, slackers,the boredom,the fear, the loneliness,the fatigue, the feeling of "making a huge mistake coming here" when I first landed in Iraq..... I think pretty much every combat veteran thought that when they left for their first tour,that "what am I doing here" phase........... I was once the "cherry" arriving in a group of other confused and scared cherries, getting off a C-130 just like Charlie Sheen and wondering what the heck I was about to get into. I deployed about a month after I came out of basic training, I arrived in Iraq a few weeks after my unit, I was a "casualty replacement" so I can really relate to Sheen's character, greener than the grass, arriving into a group of guys who were already close with each other and being the skeptically viewed "FNG". Those aspects of the Army Infantry don't change, regardless of the era.

Ironically the unit we relieved in Iraq was the 1-35 INF, 25th Infantry Div., the same exact unit depicted in Platoon.

Another good one is "Tigerland", it doesn't depict any combat but it pretty much nails the Infantry basic training experience. If you haven't seen it, it's a must see.

Movies like "Stop Loss" and "Jarhead" are Hollywood garbage, those two are 4 hours of my life I'll never get back, would have been better spent watching paint dry. If one more person asks me if being in the Army was like "Stop Loss" or "Jarhead" I'm gonna vomit.......I tell them to join and find out, rather than watching garbage movies.