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BobbyD

The Hurt Locker

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I caught this film over the weekend. Good flick...the issues I had were minimal...like a little long. It was very intense, very visually effective, and not political. It tells the story of a gung-ho bomb tech expert in Iraq who has to disarm IED's and try not to get kill or get other soldiers killed.

 

Check it out...I know it doesn't have the "character development" of 12 Rounds...but worth checking out.

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http://goldderby.latimes.com/awards_goldde...s-2468097-.html

 

Could 'The Hurt Locker' make Oscars' new top 10?

 

"The Hurt Locker" opened today to some of the strongest reviews for a movie this year. The Iraq war drama about a bomb squad earned a jaw-dropping 91 among the reviews surveyed by Metacritic, and the aggregate score of top critics at Rotten Tomatoes came in at a still-impressive 89.

 

Among those most enthusiastic about the Kathryn Bigelow-helmed movie was Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly, who called the film "an intense, action-driven war pic, a muscular, efficient standout that 
 simultaneously conveys the feeling of combat from within as well as what it looks like on the ground." She raved about the lead performance of Jeremy Renner (photo, right) as a bomb disposal specialist and noted, "Guy Pearce and Ralph 
Fiennes make brief, jolting cameo appearances as 
similar risk-takers."

 

New York Times critic A.O. Scott thought "The Hurt Locker" "is the best nondocumentary American feature made yet about the war in Iraq." As he explains, "The movie is a viscerally exciting, adrenaline-soaked tour de force of suspense and surprise, full of explosions and hectic scenes of combat, but it blows a hole in the condescending assumption that such effects are just empty spectacle or mindless noise."

 

For Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times, "'The Hurt Locker' has the killer impact of the explosive devices that are the heart of its plot: It simply blows you apart and doesn't bother putting you back together again. Overwhelmingly tense, overflowing with crackling verisimilitude, it's both the film about the war in Iraq that we've been waiting for and the kind of unqualified triumph that's been long expected from director Kathryn Bigelow."

 

And Joe Morgenstern of the Wall Street Journal said, "The film, which was written by Mark Boal, manages to be many things at once – a first-rate action thriller, a vivid evocation of urban warfare in Iraq, a penetrating study of heroism and a showcase for austere technique, terse writing and a trio of brilliant performances. Most of all, though, it’s an instant classic that demonstrates, in a brutally hot and dusty laboratory setting, how the drug of war hooks its victims and why they can’t kick the habit."

 

"The Hurt Locker" is the first feature film for Bigelow since the 2002 misfire "K-19: The Widowmaker." The enthusiastic endorsements by many of the nation's leading film critics make the movie a near certainty to appear on many of their top 10 lists at year-end. And with the Oscars expanding the best picture race to 10 nominees, a small but passionate constituency among academy members for "The Hurt Locker" could elevate it to contender status.

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'The Hurt Locker' Portays Drama, Tension of Real Life on Front Lines

By Alan Silverman

Hollywood

13 July 2009

 

 

The new film from director Kathryn Bigelow captures the day-to-day life-and-death drama drawn from real experiences of a US Army bomb disposal squad in the Iraq war. Here's a look at The Hurt Locker.

 

IED's - improvised explosive devices - have been a deadly fact of life on the highways and dusty side streets of Iraq. When one is found, they call in the highly skilled volunteers of the elite EOD - explosive ordnance disposal - squad.

 

After examining the device with a remote-control robot, a member of the team suits up in protective armor and attempts to disarm the bomb.

 

If everything looks okay when I get down there, I'm just going to give these people something to think about. I want them to know if they're going to leave a bomb on the side of the road for us, we're just going to blow up their little road."

 

"Sounds good."

 

They don't call it 'the world's most dangerous job' for nothing. The margin for error is zero; and there is more to worry about than just the IED, with snipers and insurgents often lying in wait.

 

The Hurt Locker screenplay is by Mark Boal who, as a journalist, was embedded with an OED unit. Director Kathryn Bigelow, whose films include the thriller Point Break and the submarine drama K-19: The Widowmaker, says the suspense crackling through The Hurt Locker comes from that real-life experience.

 

"There was a tremendous amount of tension already in the script and that had a lot to do with the fact that Mark Boal was on an embed in Iraq in fall of the 2004 with a bomb squad," Bigelow explains. "His observations were the genesis of the script and it was a very reportorial look at that particular conflict at that time: a day in the life of a bomb tech. I wanted to protect that. I wanted the audience to feel a kind of you-are-there, boots-on-the-ground, fly-on-the-wall experience of Baghdad.

 

"I kind of looked at it as a sort of 360-degree threat environment," she adds. "You don't know if the gentlemen up on the third floor balcony over your left shoulder is hanging out his laundry or calling in your coordinates for a sniper hit. So, as relayed to me by members of the military that have been on various tours of duty, it's a constantly threatening environment."

 

Bigelow took her cast and crew to Jordan where they found locations to double for the Baghdad settings of The Hurt Locker. Co-star Anthony Mackie says it made the production feel very realistic.

 

"You can't fake that amount of heat," Mackie says. "You can't fake that sand. You can't fake the people. When you are on set and all of the extras are Iraqi refugees, it really informs the movie that you're making. When you start hearing the stories from a true perspective, not from CNN or Fox News, but from a perspective of people who were actually there, it gives you a clear viewpoint of where you are as an artist and the story you would like to tell. It was a great experience to be there."

 

Several dramatic films about American soldiers returning from the Iraq war have won critical acclaim, but failed to pull audiences into theaters. Brian Geraghty, who plays another member of the OED squad, believes this one is different because it portrays the reality of life on the front lines.

 

"It's not a preachy thing about war or not war," he says. "It has an action element and you walk away actually thinking. How many movies have you seen recently that you can walk away and really think about?"

 

Screenwriter Mark Boal says he and director Bigelow were careful to avoid any political agenda because, as Boal puts it, there are no politics in the trenches.

 

"The idea was to be authentic and faithful and reportorial to the human experience of the soldiers in the bomb squad," Boal says. "Look, it's a movie; it's not a documentary, so it's authentic within the context of telling a great story and making a really tense, exciting movie, but If you're a bomb tech in Iraq in 2004 you might have a whole slew of opinions about the state of geopolitics and the price of oil and what makes an administration fight a war …all that stuff …but you're not going to be thinking about that or talking about it when you're standing over a bomb."

 

The Hurt Locker cast also features Jeremy Renner as the bomb squad daredevil. There are cameos by Guy Pearce, Ralph Fiennes and David Morse. The ordnance disposal armor and equipment in the film is authentic, including a remote-controlled robot that was actually used to disarm IEDs in Iraq.

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Great film! Loved the minimal use of all the big name actors.

Also kinda neat that a lot of the big names end up dying within a few minutes of their screentime!

The main actor did an amazing job, brought a lot of humanity to a character that would usually be brushed off as the cocky asshole type. I agree it did feel pretty long, especially the Sniper scene. Still well done though.

 

Between this, Moon and 500 Days of Summer this summer hasn't turned into the total bust I was expecting.

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'The Hurt Locker' sets off conflict

Some soldiers and veterans say the movie, a favorite for the best picture Oscar, portrays them as renegades and doesn't depict combat accurately. But film critics have praised its authenticity.

By Julian E. Barnes Ned Parker and John Horn

 

February 25, 2010 | 7:45 p.m.

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Reporting from Baghdad, Los Angeles and Washington - Many film critics -- and awards voters -- have praised “The Hurt Locker’s” depiction of the U.S. military in Iraq, often singling out the bomb disposal drama for its authenticity. But as the film emerges as a favorite to win the best picture Oscar, a number of active soldiers and veterans say the film is Hollywood hokum, portraying soldiers as renegades while failing to represent details about combat accurately.

 

The criticism, coming just before Oscar ballots are due Tuesday, highlights the delicate relationship between "The Hurt Locker" and the nation's armed forces. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates says the film is "authentic" and "very compelling" and has recommended it to his staff. But the government says it pulled its "Hurt Locker" production assistance at the last minute in 2007, saying that the film's makers were shooting scenes that weren't in the screenplay submitted to the Defense Department, including a sequence that the government believed portrayed troops unflatteringly. The film's producers dispute elements of the account.

 

Although "The Hurt Locker" has numerous supporters within the military -- including Purple Heart winner Drew Sloan, who participated in a "Hurt Locker" panel discussion in Hollywood with other veterans and the film's makers Wednesday night -- the movie's detractors share a consistent complaint about its representation of the Army's Explosive Ordnance Disposal team as they attempt to disarm improvised explosive devices.

 

The film, directed by Kathryn Bigelow and written by journalist Mark Boal (who was embedded with a bomb disposal team), stars Jeremy Renner as Staff Sgt. William James. Not deterred by protocol or his own safety, James is an adrenaline-addicted bomb defuser who occasionally puts his unit at risk, and at one point takes to the streets of Baghdad on a solo personal mission. Members of EOD teams in southern Iraq said in interviews arranged by the Army that "The Hurt Locker" is a good action movie if you know nothing about defusing roadside bombs or the military.

 

Sgt. Eric Gordon of San Pedro, an Air Force EOD technician on his second tour in Iraq, has watched the movie a few times with his friends. "I would watch it with other EOD people, and we would laugh," Gordon said.

 

He scoffed at a scene in which a bomb is defused with wire cutters. "It's similar to having a firefighter go into a building with a squirt bottle," Gordon said.

 

An EOD team leader in Maysan province, Staff Sgt. Jeremy D. Phillips, said, "My interest is bringing myself and my team members home alive, with all of our appendages in the right place."

 

Although he was glad the film highlighted their trade, he disliked the celluloid treatment of EOD units. "There is too much John Wayne and cowboy stuff. It is very loosely based on actual events," he said. "I'm honestly glad they are trying to convey to the public what we've been doing, and I wish maybe they had just done it with a little bit of a different spin on it," he said.

 

Others are more supportive. Sloan, a former U.S. Army captain, said at the panel discussion that "The Hurt Locker" offered a perfect snapshot of modern conflict. "This is what's going on for the men and women who are fighting this war," he said.

 

Jim O'Neil, the executive director of the EOD Memorial, which honors those killed defusing bombs, was equally enthusiastic about the film's accuracy. "It's not just a movie," he said at the panel discussion. "It's something that's actually occurring as we're sitting in these chairs."

 

Some recent veterans, however, disagreed. "The depiction of our community in this film is disrespectful," said Paul Rieckhoff, the executive director and founder of the 150,000-member Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. "We are not cowboys. We are not reckless. We are professionals. And a lot of the film would make you think the opposite."

 

"I didn't really care for it," said Brian Siefkes, who served in Iraq and plays an Army soldier in the upcoming movie "The Green Zone." "There were many moments where I felt they were trying to portray the actual life of EOD in Iraq but over-sensationalized it," he said.

 

Boal, who also produced "The Hurt Locker," said the film was not intended to be a documentary or a training film. "We certainly made creative choices for dramatic effect," he said. "But I hope the choices were made respectfully and conscientiously."

 

At one point, "The Hurt Locker" might have been made with government cooperation. But just 12 hours before Lt. Col. J. Todd Breasseale was to fly to Jordan to serve as the Army's technical advisor to "The Hurt Locker," he said in an interview that he heard there might be problems. A Jordanian official told him that scenes were being shot that were not in the script that the Army had approved. Breasseale accused the producer of shooting a scene in which soldiers act violently toward detainees. (The military does not provide help to films depicting violations of the laws of war, unless their consequences are shown.) He also charged that the production had driven a Humvee into a Palestinian refugee camp in order to film angry crowd scenes.

 

"Nice working with you," Breasseale said he recalled telling a producer before the military decided to stop working with the production. "Kathryn has a lot of talent, but I cannot trust that your company will honor its contract to the soldiers and government of the U.S." Breasseale said the filmmakers had been solicitous of the Army's opinion, "trying to get the look and feel right," and they had been allowed to film at an Army logistics base in Kuwait. Breasseale, who is now deployed, saw "The Hurt Locker" on a laptop in Afghanistan along with a soldier from one of the Army's EOD teams. He conceded it was a great story and a "spectacular looking movie. But if you're looking for realism and how military relationships really work, I believe she missed the mark," Breasseale said of Bigelow.

 

Others in the Pentagon's office overseeing work with Hollywood agree. "The filmmakers' interest in drama and excitement exceeded what we felt were reasonable realistic portrayals," said Philip M. Strub, the Pentagon's special assistant for entertainment media.

 

Boal said that while the production initially worked with the U.S. military, it parted ways when it became clear they would not approve of "The Hurt Locker's" script. He said the producers did not film on a base in Kuwait and never signed a contract.

 

"The Department of Defense did not support the movie. And my understanding is that they did not support 'Platoon' or 'The Deer Hunter,' " Boal said of two of the most revered movies about the Vietnam War. "I am OK with that outcome because I didn't want to change the script to suit them."

 

The top Pentagon official, Gates, has a very positive view of the movie. "This is the first Iraq war movie that he has liked, or for that matter seen," said Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell. "In looking at all previous films he thought they had too much of a political agenda.

 

"He just thought it was a very compelling, and what he thought was authentic, portrayal of what life is like for many of our troops in Iraq. Of the films that have been done about this war, that is the most authentic."

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