The Hurt Locker

Iraq movies. Where to begin? Going into this movie I was skeptical based on my previous experience. If you haven't read my 25 worst list, you'll know why I was skeptical. Storyline was standard, character development non-existent, action was as expected, acting was great.

The best part of this movie was the camera effects. WHY DOES THIS BLOG/MY LAPTOP KEEP INSERTING AN EXTRA PERIOD! Arg, nobody likes an extra period. Oh looky there, a pun. Back to the topic on hand. The camera effects were outstanding. Quite frankly, without this the movie gets only decent rating (probably 3/5). Oh a triple that time. Without the camera effects I don't think the action that was in the movie was enough to build suspense. Puddle reflections, close ups, use of focused/unfocused shots and scope views. All tricks that hyped up the suspense of the movie.

Acting in The Hurt Locker was outstanding. It wasn't over the top, and the emotional parts were in good taste. It's pretty hard to act a reaction as was required of Brian Geraghty (Specialist Eldrige) but he did it well.

Oh, and Evangeleine Lilly was in it! For those who don't know, this is Kate from Lost. Can't go wrong there, but you see her for a wopping 2.8 seconds. That is the story of this movie though. Very small parts, very little character development at all. Most war movie greats (i.e. Saving Private Ryan or Band of Brothers [series]) are so successful because you are connected to an individual character or squad. I didn't get this with this movie. It was 130 minutes, but there was only a minuscule amount of character development. This type of movie thrives on the bond of fellow soldiers, or the negative effects of a war such as Iraq. But you only really have 3 scenes in the entire movie where you see either of these. They're there, and one scene was very powerful, but I can't go into it. Damn these reviews!

I was pretty excited when they introduced the unit in the beginning. I hadn't seen previews/synopsis of the movie beforehand. I was expecting the normal infantry unit doing door to door searches, guarding road blocks, etc. But The Hurt Locker came at it through a different angle of a bomb squad. I think this vantage point of the war is a great idea since they could accurately depict the war. Accuracy goes a long way in my book (I referred to my worst 25 list, now check the top 25 list). They didn't show 30 man fire fights with face to face combat. Instead they showed what it's more commonly like (small fire fights and tons and tons of IEDs).

One of the most powerful scenes in the movie was the supermarket. I could never imagine fighting in a war for the defense of a country (let's not debate here, this isn't the right medium, contact me on facebook if you want to throw down) that has several dozen pizza manufacturers and hundreds of cereals. All that effort into making a buck but no effort put into thanking our troops. Which by the way, anybody reading this should do it more often.

Hmm, while watching this I was thinking that I wouldn't have very much to say. Looking back over this I see this is my longest. Nice! It was for good cause, because I think I need to update my top 25. Had the storyline been stronger it would guarantee top 10. Either way, 5/5! Great movie, deserving of the awards it won (6 oscars, 73 other awards, and 49 other nominations)....... ok I'll leave that one in as proof. Google blog developer hates me.