Film night with jb. The Hurt Locker

[JB40]

watched the Hurt Locker last night and it's easy to see why there has been such a reaction. It's unbearably tense. The first 10 minutes or so are that tense I was questioning whether I wanted to continue watching. Some scenes do bring relief, but the film maintains it's grip throughout. You find yourself holding your breath, waiting for something dreadful to happen.
I don't know if HBO had anything to do with the production, but it feels more like a contemporary TV series than a cinema release. And it's none the worse for that. The shaky hand held cameras and the jerky editing give the film the immediacy of newsreel footage. And the cheapness of the production works in it's favor and the locations are completely convincing. You would swear it was filmed in down town Baghdad. The close framing also works for TV, making you feel you're in the middle of the action. And the bleached out photography perfectly conveys the stifling heat.
The film rejects the usual war movie cliches. Scenes don't pan out the way you expect them to. When a bomb is defused, it stays defused. There are no surprise explosions as there would be in more cliched films. It's episodic, there is no final denoument. The film ends as it starts. With the team defusing a bomb. And as the film unfolds we get a sense of the different duties the team have to perform, including asessing the aftermath of a suicide bombing in a market square, and emptying one of the insurgents bomb factories and defusing a 'body bomb'. An unremitingly grim scene. And at times the movie feels like an Army procedural as we concentrate on the robot, the body suit, and the safety zones. It's all laid out for us with a minimum of dialogue and incidental music.
But for all it's originality there is something deeply conventional about the film. The soldiers are all tarnished knights, angels with dirty faces trying to do their best in an impossible situation. There seemed to be too many shots of soldiers being nice to the locals. No mention of Abu Ghraib or prisoner abuse here. In this movie there is no question that the soldiers are there to save lives and help people, even if things don't always work out for the best. And the soldiers sudden atatchment to the young arab boy and his subsequent despair didn't quite ring true.
In the end though the humanist message cuts through. The overwhelming feeling you are left with is that no human being should be asked to do what these men are doing every day. This kind of extreme stress is beyond human endurance. And it's difficult to see how any of these men could possibly go back to living any kind of normal life. It reminds us that the soldiers are suffering physically AND mentally.

I'll give it 4/5

[kate13]

That sounds really gruesome, A man film my fella would love it i'll tell him it's worth watching 4/5.

[flyin'irie]

Great film review as usual JB
I watched it a few months ago and my memories about it are a bit fuzzy but I remember having been impressed by how real it felt. I saw it a bit like a documentary showing crude scenes.
What I found a bit unbelievable tho was this guy removing his protection suit while defusing the bomb... That actually looked like the cliche of the typical action junky who don't give a sh*t to the hierarchy. I don't think that real operations can afford having guys with such temper on a so much exposed job...For a film that seems to claim closeness to reality, I thought it was a minus point...
But, yeah,... superb film...

[FATHER TED2]

I've wanted to see that film for a while now

[anant_shah94]

You've convinced me,

I'll watch after the mountain of films you've given me

[Nes B40]

Sounds like a good film, Love mi war movies especialy those baced on true story's.

[FATHER TED2]

three kings is also well worth watching, not so much for the cast and acting, although they do a reasonable job, but for the way the movie was filmed
another 2 films worth watching are 15 minutes.... about tv and the price of fame good cast robert de niro and kelsey grammer, and 13 days which is about the cuban missile crises, they're worth watching

[McDUB BOY aka Superal]

2 out of 5 ,

[NUB40]

Cheers for the review

I'll tell hubby its more his cup of tea than mine

[JB40]

Originally Posted by FATHER TED2

three kings is also well worth watching, not so much for the cast and acting, although they do a reasonable job, but for the way the movie was filmed
another 2 films worth watching are 15 minutes.... about tv and the price of fame good cast robert de niro and kelsey grammer, and 13 days which is about the cuban missile crises, they're worth watching

I thought 'Three Kings' was an interesting film eamonn. It was quite subversive, and a million miles from those 'flag wavers' that hollywood has been churning out for 70 years [since the 2nd World war].
The hurt locker is essentially a flag waver with added realism.