I just saw the movie Hurt Locker and I’ve noticed something peculiar about the reviews. By and large, the lion’s share of the bad reviews are given by veterans. On the flip side, the reviews that praise the movie to high Heaven come from those who are not veterans. I don’t make the distinction to put a spot light on useful criteria for judging movies to be good or bad. But it is an interesting distinction. Veterans, for the most part, couldn’t swallow the movie. The movie is - and ought to be - pigeonholed as a war movie, but it says farewell to the John Wayne-type war movie. It’s pitched as a movie depicting things ‘as they really are’.
It moves away from the symbolism and art and harrowing character studies of Apocalypse Now, and further away from the sprawling Deer Hunter, checkered with big-wig Hollywood heavyweights. Hurt Locker fell more into the category of a Saving Private Ryan set in modern day Iraq, without the melodrama. You could almost put it on par with Platoon. All the same, Platoon dealt with the turmoil of betrayal and rivalry in a group (a microcosm of the Vietnam situation as a whole), and Hurt Locker deals with a character who uses the war like a drug. In fact, he has used to the drug so much, it’s hard for him to get a high anymore.
The movie focuses on an expert bomb defuser, his puzzling stoic nature, his friction with his comrades, his vigilantism, and just the horrifying flavor of war in general. As to my own experience, I wasn’t drawn to the character. My gut told me the character just didn’t exist; for all that, I would have accepted it in another context. But here, he struck a discordant note against the seeming realism. In a movie like Apocalypse Now, more an allegory about evil and human nature than war in general, I could swallow Duvall’s bravado in the midst of falling bombs. His was a character representing a symbol of a certain type of soldier, itself an element in understanding the entirety of the allegory. But if Duvall’s character had been in Saving Private Ryan or Deer Hunter, it would have been an artistic gaffe. The apples and oranges need to stay in their own baskets.
This is the error I see Hurt Locker responsible for. William James (Renner) is a character that doesn’t ring true. The macho nonsense and bombast just aggravated me. Lines like: “If I’m going to die, I might as well do it comfortably.” Or: the scene when he blocks his view from his comrades out of some twisted aim to look like this silly renegade. Or: when he called his ex-wife and son, and said nothing - tiresome. Or: the overdone ‘crouch in shower scene with all your clothes and kick around in frustration’ scene - uninspired. As art, I couldn’t stomach it. I tried! The praise heaped on this movie has been enormous. My idol-critic Roger Ebert has endorsed it with an enthusiastic 4-star rating.
Ebert likes Renner’s character. To each his own. I’m not denying the movie had suspenseful scenes. I especially felt unnerved during the sniper battle, but when was I supposed to be unnerved with the scene involving the bombs in the car’s trunk, I was again distracted by a lack of realism. Why not just get everyone out of there and bomb the car to smithereens? Why risk Renner’s life? Why the middle finger when given a direct order to back away from certain death, at least a certain death that would have been felt by a normal human being in a real war? Ebert says there is no gung ho in the movie. Really? That seemed to embody Renner’s character. The character Sanborn was the realist in the movie I guess we’re supposed to side with, but then all the interchanges between him and Renner weren’t realistic. I think they needed to be for this movie to be a success.
I say all this tentatively, because I want to trust the reviews over my own sentiment. I know when I like a movie, and I can tell pretty clearly when that’s going to happen. But my experience watching this movie was exasperating, having a larger-than-life character in a movie that’s supposed to be representing the real thing. It would be like having the skeletal Tyrannosaurus Rex from Night at the Museum make an appearance on Jurassic Park. So, I am open to correction from anyone who thinks I judged this movie unfairly!
Showing posts with label Hurt Locker. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hurt Locker. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
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