The Hurt Locker—Hollywood’s first successfully
engrossing narrative film about the Iraq war—communicates the
absolute insanity, chaos, tension, psychological impact, and sudden
brutality of war without beating you over the head with the
war-is-bad stick. The Hurt Locker follows a three-man ordnance
disposal unit in Iraq as they trudge from bomb site to bomb site,
defusing explosives. There is no villain, the squad members
aren’t pithy tough guys, there is no overarching mission the squad must
complete in three acts—their lone goal is survival. It’s
pants-shittingly tense. (See Movie Times: thestranger.com/film.)
Jonah Spangenthal-Lee: Proving you wrong since 1983. More by Jonah Spangenthal-Lee
I saw this last night. It is awesome!
pants-shittingly ftw.
ps: Jonah’s review, all the way down to his description of the level of tension, is accurate.
Funny, I hated it. Hackneyed, cliched, just boring. No character development except in really obvious ways; distracting music, distracting cameos by famous actors – I was really disappointed. I never got involved enough to get tense at all. I love a good action movie, and I’m fascinated by good war films – skip this and rent Generation Kill instead.
I haven’t seen it yet, but Generation Kill predates it by a few years, doesn’t it? Everyone I know that’s fought in either of the gulf wars has said Generation Kill pretty much nailed their experience… which is pretty sad.
this film is almost total suck. well filmed with tense action sequences but utterly cliched with terrible dialogue. do yourself a favor and skip it.