“the hurt locker” film review

Congratulations to The Hurt Locker‘s six Oscar wins, including Best Picture and Best Director, Kathryn Bigelow (first FEMALE director to win, too). This movie has won dozens of awards as well, but to list them all would be silly.

As irony would have it, the day my Oscar predictions post went live, I saw Locker later that night. So I missed my chance at including a haiku review, but here it is now.

A reckless soldier
He diffuses roadside bombs
A gripping story

After watching that film, I was able to say I saw 5 of the 10 nominees for Best Picture. Also, regarding my predictions, out of the 24 categories, I correctly predicted 15 winners. I’ll do better next year.

On to the movie! I’m generally not a fan of war movies. I have nothing against them; I just don’t have a strong interest. However, I had an interest for this film sometime early last year when I caught a trailer online showing a soldier pulling a string that revealed multiple bombs surrounding him. “Wow,” I said, “that guy’s dead.” Whether or not I was right, I’m not going to say. It was a really good scene, though.

This movie is about a reckless soldier who is trained to diffuse roadside bombs. He gets a rush out of doing this job and often does his job his way, sometimes endangering those that he works with. It’s a gripping story. (Is my writing déjà vu-esque?)

What I believe makes this movie so good is how tense and suspenseful it the story gets. Scenes like the one I described above, as well as the famous sniper, have you on the edge of your seat wondering if any of these characters are going to make it out of this seriously deadly situation alive.

This movie gets the R rating for language and few violent and/or disturbing scenes. I wouldn’t recommend for young children, people with a weak stomach (for a couple scenes) or those who are easily bored. As tense as this movie can get, there are times I felt nothing really happened. But as I remember hearing from the Award winning screenwriter, Mark Boal wrote about what life was like out there. And yes, this movie is technically fictional despite a recent claim that this story was about a specific person. There are also vets that claim the movie is inaccurate. I have no opinion on the matter other than what I was taught many years ago about storytelling: sometimes you need to lie to tell the truth.

Overall, this movie definitely deserves the awards and recognition it has received. Especially for being an independent film made on a very tight budget. Many indie films don’t get this kind of treatment, but I’m glad this little underdog did, and beat the mighty Avatar that had just as many nominations and huge box office taking. I say we should meet in the middle with District 9. But that’s just me.