Review: The Hurt Locker
Posted by Mike E on August 14, 2009
“The great ignored question raised by events depicted in “The Hurt Locker” is simple: who makes the IEDs, and why? The bombs materialize and must be disarmed. A “hadji” with a cell phone may lurk among onlookers, ready to detonate the device, but we are given nothing but a sea of Iraqi faces to confront.”
by Jay Rothermel
“The Hurt Locker” is marketed as 2009’s Best Picture. Limited release and a blockbuster media campaign are creating an atmosphere of inevitability: This is the movie we must all see. Reviewers love a serious (i.e. responsible and “non-partisan”) war movie they can bloviate about, patting themselves and the movie’s producers on the back for tackling the Big Issues. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will take its own turn at the job in February 2010.
Producer-Director Kathryn Bigelow’s movie tells the story of a squad of U.S. Army specialists who disarm improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in Baghdad. When the movie begins and Staff Sergeant James (Jeremy Renner) joins the squad, they have 38 days to serve before the end of their one year rotation. Sergeant Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Specialist Eldridge (Brian Geraghty) are the other members of the squad.
Kathryn Bigelow has a reputation for introducing a little panache into her movies, so expectations for a combat movie like “The Hurt Locker” are high. In “Near Dark” (1987) she gave us some mercifully anti-Anne Rice vampires in the desert southwest. “Blue Steel” (1989) gave viewers the vicarious thrill of a bad end for notoriously hammy actor Ron Silver. “Point Break” (1991) was a surfing recapitulation of “White Heat.” “K-19: The Widowmaker” (2002) took the submarine genre to perversely quixotic heights.
The Hollywood combat movie is a genre notorious for hoary clichés. We all know them: at least one solider is on the verge of going home. Another loves war a little too much. A third, from the rear echelon, wants to see some real action. Around camp a G.I. might befriend a local boy, a Samuel Fuller war orphan with a name like Short Round. If Fuller or Robert Aldrich made the movie, most of the officers would be useless tyros or dangerous martinets. The Black soldier would come off hard-as-nails, but reveal himself late in the movie as the heart of the unit. The youngest baby-faced grunt would have a meltdown. There would be some lighter escapades, too, to break-up the bigger combat scenes: men carousing and “getting down” to the soundtrack’s rock and roll music.
“The Hurt Locker” is sold as a vigorously up-to-date hand-held no-stars kitchen-sink realist combat movie with none of these trite and ancient plot points. On this the TV commercials, stellar reviews, and print ads all agree. But the movie has them. Indeed, it seems like an encyclopedia of such clichés. So many are used that the viewer starts to feel like the victim of a practical joke, lured to the theater with the old bait-and-switch.
The clichés would not be such a bitter surprise if “The Hurt Locker” worked a little harder to disguise them. The much-touted scenes of Staff Sergeant James actually defusing IEDs take up only about 15 minutes of screen time, and are tossed-off with little respect for viewer interest in the work. James digs around the bombs, grapples with them, and pulls them apart as he tries to best their makers, but he might as well be changing a flat tire. We are not given any information on how these devices are created, or the nuts and bolts of how they work. Even the old UK TV show “Danger: UXB ” did viewers that courtesy.
Much is made of G.I. hardships in “The Hurt Locker.” Their days are a kinetic nightmare of uncertainty. Iraqis they interact with are all referred to as “hadjis,” whose next cell phone call might detonate a bomb. Drunkenness, video games, and writhing in self-pity fill the non-working hours. The only thing more grinding and disturbing than service in Iraq is life at home upon return. Spouses just don’t understand. After a trip to a grocery store, Staff Sergeant James finds he cannot wait to volunteer for another tour.
A Caricature of an Important Film
“The Hurt Locker” begins with a quotation from journalist Chris Hedges to the effect that “war is an addiction.” Deciding whether this is the height of disingenuousness or the actual low level of liberal political insight of the movie’s producers must be left to each viewer. Perhaps it was a choice between the Hedges quote and George W. Bush on U.S. consumer addiction to “foreign oil.”
“The Hurt Locker” wants to unite compelling story and compelling story-telling. Contention with a movie like “The Wages of Fear” (1953), dramatizing the perils and costs of going to work, was not out of the question. But Bigelow surrenders early and often to episodes that ape verisimilitude but kill momentum. One endless chunk of the movie, where our squad and a group of sociable Blackwater-style contractors are pinned-down by a sniper, defuses most hard-won early tension and offers no better insights than the scenes following it.
The great ignored question raised by events depicted in “The Hurt Locker” is simple: who makes the IEDs, and why? The bombs materialize and must be disarmed. A “hadji” with a cell phone may lurk among onlookers, ready to detonate the device, but we are given nothing but a sea of Iraqi faces to confront. Even a movie like “The Kingdom” (2007) had the courtesy to sketch a rationale for its bombers. Bigelow’s movie flies from such questions out of weakness, not strength. Such dishonesty, even more than dramaturgical laziness, sinks the enterprise.
Freddy said
Seriously… ? If the film would have been THAT good and show a “compelling” story and REALLY answered the question “who makes the IEDs, and why?” do you think anyone would have reviewed it? Any Oscar nominations?
n3wday said
Freddy,
Do you know Jay is a communist who frequently posts on this site? Or, are Communists incapable of reviewing movies? Please clarify what you’re talking about here.
n3wday said
actually, it would be more accurate to say he frequently posts on Kasama Threads, not the main site.
OSP said
Freddy and n3wday, could both of you further articulate? I’m not fully sure what either of you are getting at.
irisbright said
Ah, Freddy’s just being sarcastic and ascerbic (Seriously…?). I appreciate Jay’s critical reviews of films with a potential liberal bent. It goes without saying, of course, that if it had been “really good” (revolutionary, critical, hardhitting, and beautiful art) that it would have a snowflake’s chance in hell of oscar nominations.
Mike E said
I don’t want to pick at freddy’s point unfairly, or hang him on one comment. but there is a bit of a line question here:
Really?
Is it really true that if someone made a profoundly revealing movie about a U.S. war it couldn’t get reviewed? Or get oscars?
This implies that the superstructure of culture and art and media is so locked down that radical things simply cannot “bubble to the surface.”
In fact, I don’t think that’s true. And some political forces (the classic CPUSA approach to culture comes to mind) assumes that “we all know that hollywood movies suck” — and so the only point in a review is uncovering HOW they suck.
This line affects how revolutionaries deal with artists and their art. It deals with how we view radical and progressive people who choose to work in the mainstream of the culture (instead of in various marginalized subcultures).
In fact if you go over our collective list of radical and progressive films you can see (rather starkly) that film is one rather stark example of a place in the culture where all kinds of radical things get made, funded, and celebrated. (And i think it is true for other spheres of the “mainstream” culture — though in different ways, and in different degrees — including theater, music, graphic art, dance, and more.)
to put it out strongly (for discussion): I think that there are often quite radical films made, and theater and more… And that often the Oscars become a way for the artistic community generally to fuck with the government. On many issues (Indians, wars, gay liberation, racism). Lots of progressive and controversial movies have gotten oscars.
Just to pick one major example… by this argument, what does it mean for a Brokeback Mountain to be made and honored in the middle of the Bush years? Right when the ruling party (in a virtually one party state at that time) was making the demonization of gay people a cornerstone in their national offensive.
* * * * * *
In some ways, the reason a radical film on Iraq and Afghanistan can’t easily be made (or honored by the oscars) is that there is so much confusion about these wars among progressive people — because of the Obama phenomenon, because of confusion about 9/11, because of some deeply rooted hostility toward Muslim people and in favor of Israel (among otherwise progressive people).
In other words, my feeling is that radical films aren’t being made about these wars — not because of the inherently locked down nature of the superstructure, but because of the lack of a clear and clarifying voice from the left around these wars.
Radical Eyes said
Briefly, and in support of Mike’s argument about the relative autonomy of cultural production (and even Oscar nomination) with respect to the immediate political agenda of the government, and even the interests of the ruling classes more generally, I’d like to cite just two recent Academy Award nominated films–ok they’re documentaries, but still:
1) Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine which won (in 2002, I think)
2) Sam Green’s The Weather Underground (which “lost,” to an inferior and much more politically problematic film, Fog of War, in 2003 I think)
Whatever we might say that is critical of these films (and I have written articles critiquing of both film-makers, for the marxist journal Cultural Logic http://clogic.eserver.org/2004/ramsey.html ), they both include some pretty sharp criticisms of US imperialism
and capitalism more generally.
[Interestingly enough, I actually received a personal email from Sam Green, thanking me for this review of his film, which he found to "get" what he was trying to do better than any "mainstream" review that he had read...but I digress...]
P.S. While it is certainly true that documentary films do not get the same mass audience as dramatic films, it looks like this year’s category may have a pretty radical front-runner, as well: FOOD INC.
Mike E said
And what about all the Oscar nominations for “Milk”?
saoirse said
what’s interesting to me about the hurtlocker is its a critically acclaimed film about the US war in Iraq that is not tanking at the boxoffice. In the aftermath of 911 as the US was gearing up for war hollywood put out movie after movie critical of the war and all of them were more or less bombs at the boxoffice. Films ranging from saccharine overwrought dramas like lions for lambs and in the valley of eylah to little art house pics like stop loss and redacted. In the past couple of years HBO’s Generation Kill seemed to have made some headway in peaking the publics interest in the subject. The Hurtlocker, a small arty action picture has gotten both stellar reviews and excellent per theater sales. This weekend the studio is moving it to wider release. It will be interesting if it can compete with district 9 and a somewhat bigger action film. My guess is Hurtlocker will play wide the next two weekends and be out on video in early Oct.
I still havent seen the film but I am quite interest the director has track record of re-conceiving hollywood tropes and genres and for having an eye on exploring masculinity. Bieglow has been in “directors hell” since widowmaker so I am excited seeing her receive some much overdue critical praise. I can’t imagine this film getting a best picture though jeremy renner and the director may get nods. Cudos for Jay for reviewing the film and Kasama posting it. I enjoyed the review though I had a hard time following it. Again I haven’t seen the film but considering Bigelow’s track record I find it hard to believe her film rides on a wave of cliches.
Jay Rothermel said
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/aug2009/hurt-a10.shtml
http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2009/08/11/in-the-loop-hurt-locker/
These are two other Marxist reviews of “The Hurt Locker.”
Jay
Radical Eyes said
The Hurtlocker is really even worse than this review makes it sound.
Not only are the motivations and perspectives of those who make the IEDs and leave them for the Americans completely suppressed and ignored by the film, but several of the images and schemes attributed to the “terrorists” here are simultaneously ridiculous and disgusting.
For example: Our gifted de-bomber comes across an Iraqi child who has been captured, killed, and disemboweled by the evil terrorists, so that he can be used as a human bomb. Our dead soldier breaks down at the site of this violated youth, whom he mistakes for a child he met just off-base earlier in the film.
And then there is the innocent Iraqi family man, whom the terrorists have taken the pains to lock into a steel cage chest bomb and send wandering in the direction of US troops (I counted at least five separate impenetrable locks on this guy). Again, our hero does everything he can for him, as the Iraqi man begs and pleads…until the timer runs down…
Really, the film presents a virtual horror show of the “worst” kinds of Iraqi on Iraqi violence that one could dream up…
Indeed the US soldiers play a role in the film akin to peace-makers, even medics–It appears that they are just trying to keep the Iraqis from killing one another…In this sense selecting a bomb-squad as the point of narrative experience and identification is an effective ideological strategy for getting viewers to sympathize with the agents of imperialist occupation…
There ARE a couple of interesting moments in the film though. Mostly they come early one. (The ending is also worth some discussion, but I’ll leave that for later.)
1) when the veterans of the bomb squad–who are counting down their days to redeployment– openly contemplate killing their new maverick leader, in an act of preventive self-defense, before he can get them killed. They don’t do it, of course. But the specter of “fragging” briefly appears…
and 2) when after nearly killing an unarmed Iraqi driver in a tense stand-off, this same fearless maverick, gesturing to the traumatized man, says to his fellow troops something along the lines of “Well if he wasn’t an insurgent before…He is now!” As far as I can tell this throw-away “joke” is the only place in the film where HURTLOCKER so much as gestures towards the old dialectic of oppression and resistance….
Both of these moments–along with a small handful of others–suggest a darker and truer path that this film might have explored.
But it really steers clear of such moral complexity–let alone critical political reflection– for the most part.
Indeed, as I recall, there is NOT ONE single Iraqi civilian who is killed by a US soldier, bullet, or bomb in the film. There is not even “accidental” “regrettable” shooting at a check-point…
The cowardice and/or cluelessness of The Hurtlocker in avoiding the brutality of military occupation is really remarkable.
Barbara Louise said
Gay Liberation or Criticism of War are two topics which our culture — and those who have the REAL power in our culture: the rich, those who own and control the corporations, the media, and the banks — consider to be radical and titilating topics, fair game for artists to comment upon, BUT, the one idea which is universally held — within our American culture — to be “of course” a bad idea, is Communism, and any pointed critism of Capitalism as a bad idea, and an economic system which injures the majority of the population.
Gay Liberation and Pacifism do not seriously threaten the economic base of the very rich. But Critism of Capitalism — critism of the prevsailing idea that Capitsalism is the peak of civilization, the best social system humans ever invented — is too dangerous to be allowed consideration as a rational, “artistic” idea. Search your own minds. Does not the word “Communism” bring up lots of negative thoughts? Don’t you think that Capitalism is such a good system that all we need to do is discover how capitalism can benefit everyone, so we can all be free? Are we not a culture with no classes, just unfortunately divided between Winners and Losers, winners at the game of capitalism, and losers who deserve their inferior lifesyles, if they cannot succeed in Capitalism, a system which rewards hard work and superior gamesmanship?
Jay Rothermel said
http://marxistupdate.blogspot.com/2010/03/hurt-locker-82nd-in-series-of-bad-best.html
How right we all were all those months ago!