| And now for something not-so-serious. I don't typically write book or movie reviews, but after this weekend, I really felt compelled to. This movie just stuck in my craw. But take heed: This is a review for military people. So if you've never been in the military or never been to Iraq, just stop reading this. Because if you keep reading, I'll probably ruin what could be a pretty good action flick for you.
The Hurt Locker is a high-tension, well-made, action movie that will certainly keep most viewers on the edges of their seats. But if you know anything about the Army, or about operations or life in Iraq, you'll be so distracted by the nonsensical sequences and plot twists that it will ruin the movie for you. It certainly did for me.
To say that the scenes in this movie were "tactically unrealistic" wouldn't even begin to describe it. I imagine they probably had terribly frustrated military consultants on set. You could tell they tried, but the director was like, "Nah, let's have the three EOD guys split up alone and go chasing bad guys at night through city streets. People will love it!" And the military consultants probably just rolled their eyes.
But let me first set the stage here: This movie is about the addictive adrenaline rush of combat--how it fuels the soldier and how, like any drug, it can be fatal. Okay, I got that. No problem there. And as the vehicle for this type of adrenaline junkie, the writers chose to make it about an explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) team--and one team member in particular. Now that's a stressful job, so I have no problem with that plot scenario, either. Should be interesting.
But here's where the problems start. Because the script writers were, for lack of a better term, lazy, they couldn't formulate a story tying the adrenaline rush of combat to the actual job of your average EOD soldier in Iraq. So they decided instead to make a movie about an EOD/Ranger/sniper/commando/hero guy and his two sidekicks. Who apparently don't have access to radios. And who travel around Iraq by themselves. In fact, most of the scenes rely on oddly and unrealistically contrived situations to induce a stressful reaction from the audience.
And whether you're writing a screenplay or a book, this is a lazy technique. It's hard to create stress by developing a character's personality so intricately that the audience is actually gripped by a decision the character must make with regard to, say, suicide. On the other hand, it's easy to create stress by strapping a bomb to a guy, locking him in a metal cage/harness with multiple heavy-duty padlocks and placing a timer on it set to expire in two minutes. As exhibited in The Hurt Locker, this is especially effective when the EOD tech arrives on the scene with bolt cutters that don't work. Panic ensues.
But ultimately, the former technique is reflective of some great movies that stay with you. The latter is a cheap thrill you'll forget about by Monday morning.
So, without giving away too many scenes, let's just suffice it to say, in real life, EOD techs don't conduct dangerous missions as autonomous three-man teams without communications gear. They don't typically carjack Iraqi VCD sellers with a 9mm while wearing civilian clothes, either. While on Camp Victory. And even if they did, they wouldn't be driven off base by the Iraqi and dropped off at another Iraqi family's house, at which time they hop a wall, enter an unlocked door, get into an altercation, flee the scene, and run through an Iraqi city attempting to make it back to the base.
That typically doesn't happen. Another thing you'll rarely hear in combat is an EOD E-7 suggesting to two or three of his guys that they leave the scene of an explosion in an Iraqi city by saying: "C'mon, let's split up. We can cover more ground that way." But you'll hear it in The Hurt Locker.
Reading all the positive reviews for this movie, I really had high hopes for it. But I just couldn't get past uber-fictional portrayal of life in combat in Iraq. If you can, more power to you. Enjoy the movie. It's definitely not boring. As rendered, however, it's no Full Metal Jacket, Jarhead, or even The Longest Day.
Oh, and one last complaint: If you've already watched the movie and thought you were seeing things, yes, those were actually Vietnam-era UH-1 Huey helicopters they were using for the casualty evacuation scene. |
