The Hurt Locker

[handihoc]

Just a little bit off topic but . . . anybody seen it? I just did and thought it was pretty damn fine film-making, and relentlessly tense from start to finish.

But, is there anyone who can comment on how authentic it really is? For example:

********SPOILER ALERT*********

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Isn't the character of Staff Sergeant James something of a stock war movie cliche?

And would a staff sergeant really lead just two men on a foolhardy mission into darkened Baghdad backstreets in search of a bomber or bombers, knowing the risks? And would his men follow him?

I found it stretched the imagination a little that US soldiers would be that undisciplined.

[Waycool]

Good flick. Think it was trying to capture the man on the edge type thing after defusing umpteen 100 IED. Didn't they say he has done like 800+ IEDs?

[handihoc]

Yeah, they did. I meant to say 'stock war movie cliche' character (have edited original post now), because that kind've man on the edge character just keeps turning up in even the best of war movies, from Platoon to Full Metal Jacket et al, going way back, I guess, to John Wayne and many other fifties/sixties WWII movies.

So I'm wondering if that is Hollywood (albeit, edgy, punchy Hollywood at its best) or can these characters exist/survive/remain in uniform in a real contemporary western army in a real contemporary war zone?

[gunnergoz]

I've never been in a war, only read about it...but almost nothing would surprise me as almost anything seems possible in wartime, just from reading about what it can be like. Literally anything can happen because war affects human behavior and perceptions so much. I'm even reluctant to use words like "realistic" or "unrealistic" any more, since both have proven to be wrong so many times. Perhaps it is more useful to ask about what an audience is willing to accept as being within the realm of their imagination...

[Michael Emrys]

Perhaps it is more useful to ask about what an audience is willing to accept as being within the realm of their imagination...

Maybe what handihoc was trying to get at though was why Hollywood seems to fall back on stock characters so often rather than try to explore other personality types. Maybe the answer is that that is what everybody including the audience feels comfortable with. Might as well ask why grand opera does the same thing.

Michael

[MeatEtr]

There's already been a thread started about this movie.

http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=87798&highlight=hurt+locker

My only question at this point is, when the hell is it going to be released nationwide? Apparently it's still a limited release despite having a bunch of commercials for it and rave reviews as well.

[costard]

Nice point Michael. I guess hollywood is finding out about our boredom with their stock characters. Too bad they sacked all their writers.

[Michael Emrys]

My only question at this point is, when the hell is it going to be released nationwide? Apparently it's still a limited release despite having a bunch of commercials for it and rave reviews as well.

It played in my town—population ~6,000—last week. If it isn't in nationwide release yet, then I am surprised.

Michael

[hcrof]

It certainly stretched my imagination a lot. Just about everything he does in the whole film would get him court marsialed IMO.

*SPOILERS*

Using smoke to prevent your squadmates covering you? Refusing to use the robot? That is stupid to the extreme and even if he has a deathwish I am amazed the higher ups didnt send him home so he doesnt get everyone else killed.

When they go into the desert (pointless interlude?) and save the british special forces team I finally snapped and decided the film was terrible. Aparently an EOD team are better snipers than the SF and save the day while the team just wanders around doing nothing.

If they wanted to imply that the stress was getting to them and that was causing bad decisions they could have taken out many of the action scenes and replaced them with talking scenes. The SF bit would be the first to go IMO and you could get a sense of what was going on in their heads. You would then have an interesting film rather than a series of vaguely related set pieces.

\rant over

I preferred the Kingdom

[Dietrich]

Using smoke to prevent your squadmates covering you? Refusing to use the robot? That is stupid to the extreme...

Stupid to the extreme and plenty to get him court-martialed, but aren't these just the sort of things that the audience not only doesn't mind the hero of the movie doing but also kind of expects the protagonist of a modern American war movie to do? Cuz, y'know, heroes never follow the rules nowadays, and the things they do which at first seem suicidally stupid are proven to be the better courses of action when it's all over.

In the final analysis, Hollywood doesn't care about what's realistic or what's tactically smart. They only care about what will entertain and what will make the audiences want to come to the theater in the first place.

When they go into the desert (pointless interlude?) and save the british special forces team I finally snapped and decided the film was terrible. Aparently an EOD team are better snipers than the SF and save the day while the team just wanders around doing nothing.

Maybe it was a sort of "a top-notch American EOD team is as good as any given British special-forces team" kind of thing. (Was it ever noted what particular sort of British SF they were?)

Also, I wouldn't be surprised if they were 'sniping' at much-closer-than-sniperly range. Anybody here seen a movie in which snipers were shown taking shots at realistic ranges (600 to 1200+ meters)? If so, I'd like to know which movie(s).

I preferred the Kingdom

Thought I haven't seen The Hurt Locker, I have seen The Kingdom.

**** FILMED IN SPOILER-VISION! ****

How's this for pushing the plausibility envelope? Not only are FBI agents (not Delta Force, not DEVGRU, not even CIA) sent to Saudi Arabia, and not only do these FBI agents determine who is the mastermind of the suicide- and truck-bombing of the American compound, by the end of the movie they track him down, take out dozens of his henchman in a wide-ranging firefight, and shoot dead (with an AK-47, ironically) the mastermind himself.

Definitely a post-9/11 movie, if ya know what I mean. :cool:

Makes me wonder if the British (and maybe even the Spanish) have made any action-type movies where agents of their government track down and kill bomber-makers and such.

[hcrof]

*SPOILERS ETC*

Dietrich - you are right, in the snipers scene the 2 snipers were about 400m from each other, further than most movies but still pretty close. My complaint is that the EOD team grab the sniper rifle and engage the insurgents while the SF team sit around drinking orange juice after their leader is killed. (unspecified SF or PMC, they are wearing civilian clothes and some pretty good kit including a .50cal Rifle and have just kidnapped several important insurgents)

At least the kingdom didn't take itself that seriously!

As for British agents killing bomb makers, James Bond springs to mind

[GSX]

Plenty of british TV progs tackle the issues, if not movies as such. This has been a case since the late 70's where a lot of the time the IRA were the enemy. Programmes like harry's game etc. There have been a few powerful dramas centered around Mid East terrorists/Pakistan etc. Although they tend to be a wee bit more accurate than Holywood some of them are pretty OTT when it comes to actual militaries and how they really operate.

The military ethos is caution when there is no call for rapid thinking or action. If it takes 3 days to clear an IED, then so be it if there are no other reasons to do so. This would be very boring to the average movie audience.

[handihoc]

Those guys in the desert, I think they were British contractors and/or bounty hunters, not special forces (they shouted about their prisoners being worth, I think, half a million dollars).

But that raises another point. When the US guy took the sniper rifle, he took out an enemy on the run hundres of metres away, running laterally ACROSS his line of vision. Is it likely he would have hit him at that distance, when the guy was running? And why was that guy lying out there in the open, anyway?

[handihoc]

Well, here's a pretty definitive assessment: http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2009/sep/15/the-hurt-locker-another-view

It's by a former British Royal Engineer bomb disposal expert, who is somewhat less than impressed.

From my point of view, I think I made the mistake of looking for a documentary rather than accepting it for the piece of Hollywood entertainment - albeit a powerful one - that it actually is.

[Michael Emrys]

If it's got actors in it, it probably isn't going to be much of a documentary. A Bridge Too Far and Band of Brothers are about as close as it gets, and they are both off by a good bit.

Michael

[handihoc]

I'd add Generation Kill to that short list, Michael (though my experience of military life is, admittedly, nil, so I can only go by what I see and read).

[Michael Emrys]

I'd add Generation Kill to that short list...

Haven't seen that yet, so I'll reserve comment.

Michael

[handihoc]

I recommend it very highly. I would say it's a drama that is far closer to documentary than Hurt Locker. Given that it was written by a Rolling Stone journo embedded with a US Marine recon company, it's about as close to the real thing as a tv drama is likely to get.

Another one I'd recommend is Occupation, a British TV (BBC, I think) drama series about the Brits in Iraq.

[hcrof]

Generation Kill is very, very good. It takes a while to develop but it is a compelling series.

The characters are believable - one Marine even plays himself! The action is good too, not over the top at all.

The banter is hilarious but the tensions between ambitious commanders and the men carrying out the often contradictory or unrealistic orders is what makes the series great. Highly reccomended.

[gunnergoz]

Have to bump this thread, having finally purchased the DVD and seen The Hurt Locker myself.

I found it to be a very good movie. As always, Hollywood stretches credulity a bit, but given what I have heard of the Iraq war, not too incredibly in this case. What I found most intriguing (and ultimately satisfyingly credible) about the film is that it did not try to answer all the questions about characters, motives, personal histories and outcomes. It just sort of dumps some people/scenes on your lap and lets you try to sort out what happened before, what is happening now, and what happens afterward. That is more like real life to me than a film that neatly wraps up everything in the silly little endings that the average film goer expects.

Interestingly, my Ukrainian wife gave up on it early, complaining it was just a "documentary" and "not a movie." A little too realistic for her (and she left before the real gory parts, too) and probably in the sense I described above. Russian/Ukrainian films also tend to provide neatly tied together plots/characters/scenes/motives/endings. I know because we watch a lot of them in our home...

Anyway, I do not hesitate to call The Hurt Locker an excellent film; whether it is an accurate depiction of anything or anyone is open to debate, but do recall that one EOD grunt is suing the producers of the film for allegedly basing the film upon him personally, then not including him in the credits or reimbursing him in any way. If he, a war vet, feels there is enough in the film to tie it to him, certainly there are likely some scenes in the film that ring true for him too.

[Clavicula_Nox]

Entertaining movie; but I wouldn't want someone to walk away thinking that it is an accurate picture of Iraq.

[Elmar Bijlsma]

I found it a disappointing film. As I said at The Annex:

I thought Hurtlocker was a pretty incoherent gathering of stories to prove that one EOD guy had a screw loose. Individually quite entertaining, the whole didn't make much narrative sense other then to illustrate the adrenaline addiction.

And as Blackhorse mentioned, a bit iffy on occasion. What was that sniper engagement about? It made no sense. I'm amazed that the scriptwriters couldn't think of enough excitement within the confines of a more or less realistic EOD environment.

A below average film, very near to being bad, IMHO. Astonished it did so well at the BAFTAs.

[MeatEtr]

I think it's overrated, Hollywood loves to reward the underdog at the Oscars. It's not bad though, I recommend it to others.

But yeah what was that sniper scene all about? It just feels kinda placed there like "Ok what now, I don't know, lets put them into a sniper scene, people like that stuff."

Interesting how an EOD team would take over the role of a sniper even though there are other SpecOps guys still there. Also it seemed odd the SpecOps guys showed no emotion at all from seeing their own sniper and team leader get killed.

[Tero]

But yeah what was that sniper scene all about? It just feels kinda placed there like "Ok what now, I don't know, lets put them into a sniper scene, people like that stuff."

I'd say, given the director is a female, they needed a groggy, gritty manly-man scene to offset the "deep" girlie-plot base camp boozing, wrestling and chewing of fat scenes. It nicely also moons both the Brits and manly-man gung-ho attitudes of war.

Interesting how an EOD team would take over the role of a sniper even though there are other SpecOps guys still there. Also it seemed odd the SpecOps guys showed no emotion at all from seeing their own sniper and team leader get killed.

But hey, they did get to use big name British talent in the scenes.

As to the smoke-popping scene: it sort of makes sense as the smoke obscures the vision for the mobile phone fielding insugents so they can not command detonate the mine when they are supposed to. To a woman that is. I wondered why they did not command detonate when they saw the guy approach the site anyway....

All in all, not a bad movie. A girlie-plot war movie without the oblicatory romantic sub plot.

[REVS]

I know I'm a late arrival on this thread but I only saw the film last Sunday. Good enough film about soldiers' lives, but ridiculous at the same time.

I happened to stumble across an Australian army Major who worked in bomb disposal in Iraq who was talking on the radio only a day or two before I saw the film, and essentially he said the film was hopelessly unrealistic about bomb disposal (much like the bomb disposal expert story in the Guardian, linked to on page 2 of this thread).

The Major said they use robots so often in their work that putting on the heavy protective suit and approaching the bomb is definitely a rarity, and no way it's routine. And as for the famous 'cutting the wires' build-up of tension that film-makers can't resist, he says he never does that. And they haven't done that for many years. There was so much else that he said "er, no, we don't do that, in fact never" that I was starting to think it'd be a 'Windtalkers' turkey movie before I saw the Hurt Locker, but all the human side of the film, and the film-making itself, meant it was a much better film than that Windtalker dross.

However, the way the Major tells it, if you made a realistic film about bomb disposal, it'd probably be a pretty boring movie these days.