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| Tim Skirvin... |
 Posted: Wed Sep 09, 2009 1:07 am |
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It took me quite a while to actually make it to _The Hurt Locker_.
I first saw something about it on The Daily Show a few months ago, and
shortly thereafter actually saw a trailer for it. It looked depressing,
violent, and extremely compelling - and perhaps more of a "concept" movie
than a "plot" one. And for whatever reason, it seemed like a movie I wanted
to see *with* somebody - perhaps not in a "date movie" kind of way, but at
least with a friend. But all this led to not seeing it at all - not
everyone thinks of this kind of thing as good "social fare". And so when I
saw that it was still showing at one of the local art theatres, I braved it
alone. And I was happy that I did so.
_The Hurt Locker_ is about a bomb squad unit in Iraq in 2004 - back
when the insurgency was at its strongest. The squad is led by Sgt James, a
hotshot explosives expert who would always rather disable the bombs by
hand, rather than using the bomb robot or just plain blowing up the
explosives from a distance. His squad mates think that he has a death wish;
and the movie is, in part, about the question of whether they're right.
The movie is, of course, stressful to watch. The scenes from the
trailers - the road-side explosives, the tied-together bombs, the car
stuffed with explosives - all of these occur in the first 45 minutes or so.
While those scenes were hard to watch, it turns out that the later scenes
were harder - the suicide bomber, the children, and the sniper battle in
the desert. Those scenes seemed more open-ended, and therefore harder to
watch. At least with the bombs, you know when they're disarmed.
But that wasn't actually the interesting part. The truly
fascinating part was observing the Iraqis - their interactions with the
Americans, their fascination and contempt for the occupiers, the children's
choice of language (the saddest part of the movie for me was the kids
having learned English from Gangsta Rap music videos), and their varied
relationships with the insurgency. I don't know how accurate it all was,
but it *seemed* real, in a way that I hadn't seen very much of lately.
For all of these good parts, the movie was still somewhat shallow.
It's really a character piece, but besides "addicted to combat", the
character turns out to be fairly shallow. I don't know what could have
improved matters, but I didn't really come around to understanding the
character all that well over time. All I can say is that I disliked him
slightly less at the end of the movie than at the beginning.
Still, it was worthwhile. And I would have liked to talk to
somebody about it as I came out.
*** 1/4
- Tim Skirvin (tskirvin at (no spam) killfile.org)
--
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