The Hurt Locker
Jul. 13th, 2009 12:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seriousficSynopsis: Sergeant JT Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Specialist Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty) have the most dangerous job in Iraq. As members of an Explosive Ordinance Disposal unit, they’re tasked with defusing IEDs. After Staff Sergeant William James (a weirdly Nathan Fillion-y Jeremy Renner) takes over the team, they begin to wonder whether his recklessness is the mark of a genius or a madman, as over the course of their tour of duty, James comes more and more to resemble the bombs he defuses—dangerous, and always getting closer to exploding.
Review: This is probably the most involving action movie I’ve seen all year, which is weird, because it isn’t an action movie. There’s no master bomber they’re trying to catch or kidnapped girlfriend they’re trying to rescue. It’s just an EOD team, doing what they do, but the movie finds just the right mix of character study and action scenes which push those characters in a way Michael Bay could never understand (a sniper duel that is mostly the characters sitting around, waiting for a shot, is more exciting than the giant alien robot wars of Transformers by a big factor). There’s not one action sequence that you could cut out which wouldn’t impact your understanding of these characters. Compare that to all the “just because” fight scenes in recent years.
The character of William James is one of those personalities crafted by great writing and a great performance that you can throw against the wall a hundred times and come up with a different way of looking at him each time. I usually disdain homosexual subtext, finding it cheap and obvious (“Hmm, what’s the author trying to say here… I know, everyone is gay!” Well, unless the author is Devin Grayson, no, keep trying), but aforementioned sniper duel becomes a homosocial bonding experience that lends an oddly intimate feel to being under fire together. And frustrated homosexual longing is just one way you can look at the character. It’s very compelling stuff.
Even if the movie lost James, which would be the kind of subtraction on par with The Dark Knight losing the Joker or Pirates of the Caribbean throwing away Jack Sparrow, the simple day-to-day life of these people in this setting never gets boring, never stops being fascinating in its verisimilitude and psychology. When you combine that with, in James, the deconstruction of every cop on the edge, loose cannon, cocky risk-taker cliché—basically asking what it would be like to depend on the usual action hero to get you home safe—it becomes a movie that seems to define Iraq in the same way that Apocalypse Now defined Vietnam.
Now, I do have some problems, but they’re mainly just niggles. First, I think the movie has a few too many moments that serve no purpose but to go “ooh, bad war!” I think they’re trying to establish an atmosphere and a reasoning for James’s character, but they bang the gong a little too hard and for me, it came off as tone-deaf.
Second, and for me this was about on par with the first criticism, there are too many celebrity cameos. I don’t know what else to call them, because there are these bit parts that are cast with A-list stars. It’s very distracting, because you’re watching this movie cast with unknowns (c’mon, tell me where you know Jeremy Renner from), so it feels like you’re watching Sergeant JT Sanborn instead of Colin Farrell playing Sergeant JT Sanborn (an earlier casting, which undoubtedly would’ve hurt the film), and then suddenly—OMG! Is that the guy from Lost?
And they’re such small parts that they don’t need actors of that caliber. It’s like, “wait a minute, what’s Willem Dafoe doing in Iraq?” Yes, that is the biggest criticism I have of the movie. I never said I was easy to please.
Go see it, you’ll have a great time and it’ll give you a new understanding of what these soldiers go through… and how it feels to straddle the thin line between courage and insanity.
Review: This is probably the most involving action movie I’ve seen all year, which is weird, because it isn’t an action movie. There’s no master bomber they’re trying to catch or kidnapped girlfriend they’re trying to rescue. It’s just an EOD team, doing what they do, but the movie finds just the right mix of character study and action scenes which push those characters in a way Michael Bay could never understand (a sniper duel that is mostly the characters sitting around, waiting for a shot, is more exciting than the giant alien robot wars of Transformers by a big factor). There’s not one action sequence that you could cut out which wouldn’t impact your understanding of these characters. Compare that to all the “just because” fight scenes in recent years.
The character of William James is one of those personalities crafted by great writing and a great performance that you can throw against the wall a hundred times and come up with a different way of looking at him each time. I usually disdain homosexual subtext, finding it cheap and obvious (“Hmm, what’s the author trying to say here… I know, everyone is gay!” Well, unless the author is Devin Grayson, no, keep trying), but aforementioned sniper duel becomes a homosocial bonding experience that lends an oddly intimate feel to being under fire together. And frustrated homosexual longing is just one way you can look at the character. It’s very compelling stuff.
Even if the movie lost James, which would be the kind of subtraction on par with The Dark Knight losing the Joker or Pirates of the Caribbean throwing away Jack Sparrow, the simple day-to-day life of these people in this setting never gets boring, never stops being fascinating in its verisimilitude and psychology. When you combine that with, in James, the deconstruction of every cop on the edge, loose cannon, cocky risk-taker cliché—basically asking what it would be like to depend on the usual action hero to get you home safe—it becomes a movie that seems to define Iraq in the same way that Apocalypse Now defined Vietnam.
Now, I do have some problems, but they’re mainly just niggles. First, I think the movie has a few too many moments that serve no purpose but to go “ooh, bad war!” I think they’re trying to establish an atmosphere and a reasoning for James’s character, but they bang the gong a little too hard and for me, it came off as tone-deaf.
Second, and for me this was about on par with the first criticism, there are too many celebrity cameos. I don’t know what else to call them, because there are these bit parts that are cast with A-list stars. It’s very distracting, because you’re watching this movie cast with unknowns (c’mon, tell me where you know Jeremy Renner from), so it feels like you’re watching Sergeant JT Sanborn instead of Colin Farrell playing Sergeant JT Sanborn (an earlier casting, which undoubtedly would’ve hurt the film), and then suddenly—OMG! Is that the guy from Lost?
And they’re such small parts that they don’t need actors of that caliber. It’s like, “wait a minute, what’s Willem Dafoe doing in Iraq?” Yes, that is the biggest criticism I have of the movie. I never said I was easy to please.
Go see it, you’ll have a great time and it’ll give you a new understanding of what these soldiers go through… and how it feels to straddle the thin line between courage and insanity.
