Originally written December 20, 2010 at 12:10 am
**SPOILER ALERT** In my rant I give away huge chunks of the movie.
When I watched Avatar, I was blown away. It is the only movie I have ever watched multiple times in the theater. When it lost the Academy Awards in almost every category to The Hurt Locker, a movie I had not seen, I assumed it was because The Hurt Locker must have been beyond awesome. I had heard that there was some politics behind it since the director of The Hurt Locker, Kathryn Bigelow is the ex-wife of the director of Avatar, James Cameron. I now firmly believe that Cameron was robbed in some sort of popularity contest. I was excited as I started the DVD. That excitement turned, quickly, into sighs.
The Hurt Locker follows a three man Explosive Ordinance Disposal (EOD) team based out of Camp Victory in Baghdad (October 2004, year after I was there) as they are called out to diffuse numerous Improvised Explosive Devices (IED).
Let us start with the things the movie did well. The cinematography is well done. The sets featuring Iraqi streets were done fairly well. The best I have seen in a movie set in Iraq to date. Jeremy Renner delivered a very good performance as the lead character William "Will" James (great name!). That is about it.
Now for the things that were just beyond ridiculous. The three-man EOD team moves about Baghdad in an HMMWV (Humvee) by themselves. Not in convoy, etc. In fact, there are scenes where they do not even have someone in the turret. Like they are out for a nice leisurely Sunday drive. We did this in blacked out civilian vehicles working with the Iraqi Police, but never in a Humvee. That is just asking to be ambushed which is why standing orders were (and probably still are) three vehicle convoys minimum.
Then amazingly, they seem to be out on long distance patrols for no apparent reason. While out on the patrol they come across a bunch of private contractors (think Blackwater) who happen to have had a flat tire in the middle of the desert while transporting two of the Playing Card members of Saddam's regime. Amazingly, the soldiers cannot tell that they are contractors so they get out of the Humvee, and advance across a great deal of open terrain without cover to disarm one of them. Then they finally realize what is going on. Amazingly, an Iraqi sniper team ambushes them from a distant building. So far distant in fact that the American's can barely make out the enemy through the scope of the Barrett .50 sniper rifle. The Iraqi sniper is using what appears to be a Draganov and has channeled the spirit of Carlos Hathcock, rarely missing a shot. After killing the sniper, they sit watching for the rest of the day, in the sun. They never get reinforcements, air support, etc. When one member tells Will that he sees movement behind them (in the middle of a bunch of goats) the team leader does not look, instead he tells the guy it is his call. The guy shoots (and kills an insurgent), and Will the psychic knows that the insurgent is dead and says good job.
The scene that throws all logic to the wind is one of the first. Will and his crew go to diffuse a bomb. They cannot find the soldiers who called for them. They find their Humvee empty, soldiers nowhere to be seen. Will spots someone waving a small American flag out of a building. He walks over and the entire squad is hiding in the entryway of a building and says that the bomb is down the road. The soldiers fear is plainly evident. Will shuns the use of the robot, and instead suits up. He walks out and deploys smoke on the way. Okay, I could possibly see deploying smoke to obscure your movement so an insurgent does not see you getting close to the bomb to diffuse it, but you would need to put smoke in all directions the guy might be watching from. He then continues down the road, the only ones not able to see him, are the troops. Iraqi's are everywhere watching. Oh, and this is a magic smoke grenade. He keeps walking through smoke even though the grenade is far behind him and not being blown forward. He then walks into an intersection with Americans guarding it. So I guess the cowardly soldiers he is disgusted with, are also the ones furthest from the bomb. Suddenly an Iraqi in a taxicab drives around the roadblock (without being shot at all) and nearly runs Will over. Will draws his US Army issue Beretta. Amazingly it is a Beretta 92 which has not been manufactured since 1976 (obvious because it has no safety) instead of the 92FS. He then gets the driver to back up to the soldiers who promptly take him into custody. He then continues down the road, now probably about 1/4 mile from where he started. He finds and diffuses a bomb. Then realizes it leads to multiple more. He quickly diffuses them all while the insurgent who buried them watches. The insurgent waits to go downstairs and blow the bombs until Will is almost done. By the time he gets down the two flights of stairs, it is too late and Will is finished. Will shows him the blasting cap in victory and lets him go.
Shortly thereafter, a Psychologist Lieutenant Colonel decides to go on a mission with them. An IED in a rice bag goes off and vaporizes him, leaving only his helmet. He is so obliterated that there is no blood, and apparently no body, because one team member is desperately trying to find him. The three-man team is called to collect unexploded ordinance from a building. Amazingly the troops who called them had not actually cleared the building yet. I'm still unclear how the psychic troops knew that there were bomb making materials in the building if they hadn't gone in it yet, but hey this is Hollywood right. Therefore, the three-man team clears the whole building by themselves while the dozens of infantry stay outside. I guess EOD is trained to act as Delta operators in their spare time or something.
The Hurt Locker is Hollywood's extreme left wing biased view of what war is and soldiers are. The most telling moment is the scene where there is a wounded insurgent and the soldiers are ordered to execute him despite the medic's assertions that his wounds are survivable. If this were the case in reality then we would not have to have any debates about Guantanamo Bay because there would not be anyone there.
In short, this movie was so frustratingly illogical that I found it impossible to enjoy. Even looking back at it and trying to imagine watching it as if I was never a soldier, nor an OIF vet, I still do not think I could get past the total lack of logic. Amazingly nearly all the top critics love it. Reading up on it, it seems that many OIF veterans and EOD Techs are quite disgusted with it. I totally agree with them. I give it a 4.5 / 10, which places it on par with GI Joe Rise of the Cobra, which seemed more realistic.
