Wednesday, February 3, 2010

The Hurt Locker - A Review

Last night we saw the movie "The Hurt Locker", a film that has been nominated for some honors.
The story follows the activities of American soldiers in Iraq whose job is the defusing of roadside bombs, IED's, and other explosives problems.
Let me get right to the review.  The directing is competent but ordinary, and time transitions are badly handled.
The acting is above average but the characters are either stereotypes or caricatures so acting doesn't save the movie.
But what bothered me most was that the action was not plausible.  The sergeant in charge of the three man team is emotionally supercharged and behaves in such a way as to endanger the team as well as himself.  His conduct is never reviewed by a superior officer.  Indeed, the team seems to live and work in a bubble of their own making and do not have to answer to any higher authority.  There is no oversight, and apparently there are no other teams working in the same area.
In the first part of the movie we are shown a robot which is used to help reduce danger for the men who do this dangerous work.  After the first incident, we never see the robot used again..
No reason given for that, but we can see that the new team leader is a hot dog who not only approaches live bomb sites without the robot but also without a helmet, and once even without his heavy armor.  
This can make for an exciting movie if you are not a veteran or if you have a limited amount of life experience.  Otherwise one recognizes the action as faked and forced and is required to condemn the film as defective anti-war propaganda. 
That's really too bad because this is a war to be condemned and what is happening to our soldiers in the real world is a travesty of sanity and justice.

No comments:

Post a Comment