Synyster Graves

The Hurt Locker

by on Jun.16, 2010, under Angry Rants

Next in my line of fire is another film, ‘The Hurt Locker’. It’s about an American bomb disposal expert working in Iraq disarming IEDs. I watched this film thinking it would be another hard hitting, true(-ish) to life, action/drama/thriller like ‘The Kingdom’. How wrong was I. First, I’ll start with the name, ‘The Hurt Locker’ which is apparently some dodgy American slang for “being in a bad place” that doesn’t really translate to UK English, so a fail there.

The next issue with the film is the lead characters name; Will James (played by Jeremy Renner). Now when you have a load of people running around, out of focus, dressed in the same uniform, it’s generally not a good idea to give one of the characters a christian name for his surname. This lead to some confusion early on (before we were informed that Will’s surname was James), when some people would yell “James!” and some would yell “Will!”. Who the hell is James?…. Ohhhh, thank you director, 30 minutes later you tell me Will’s full name is Will James.

Next, our somewhat anti-social lead character, Will, forms a strange friendship with an Iraqi boy who makes a living selling DVDs to the soldiers on the army base.  Will then raids an IED factory to find the boy, dead, on a table at the back of the factory. He’s been cut open with an IED inserted in his stomach, presumably for the terrorists to sneak the boy onto the base and detonate him. That night Will sneaks off the base to find who did this to the boy. He ends up in some Iraqi professors’ house, gets assaulted by the professors’ hysterical wife and then runs back to the army base having accomplished nothing. What the hell just happened there? Later on in the film we see someone who looks like the boy running through the base, trying to get Will’s attention, but Will just ignores the boy. Again, what the hell?!

The part of the film that annoyed me the most, however, was when Will and his team (a team of only three soldiers may I add) encounter an 8 strong SAS patrol disguised as locals in the desert. All goes as it would have in real life to start with, the SAS team doesn’t shoot on the bomb disposal unit when they are challenged. They realise they are both working for the same team and the Americans start helping the SAS change a flat tire on their truck. Suddenly a sniper starts firing at the allied soldiers and they all dive for cover. In the ensuing firefight, three of the SAS soldiers die, and then the other SAS soldiers start panicking like chickens thrown in a cattery. The SAS soldiers call for help over the radio and cower in the corner crying for their mothers!

So naturally it’s left to the Americans, namely Will and his sergeant, to take control of the SAS’s only sniper rifle and in full ‘Jarhead’ proficiency seem to become a fully qualified sniper & spotter team. Chatting the jargon used by a sniper/spotter team and taking out all the enemies that the SAS soldiers (who are actually trained in sniping) failed to kill. I mean, come on! Will explains later that he has disarmed over 830 IED’s, he only looks about 30 so I very much doubt he’s had time to attend 2 years of sniper school. The same goes for his sergeant who, it is explained, was in intelligence before he joined the bomb disposal squad. Highly unlikely either of them are crack snipers.

This really annoys me or two reasons; firstly any special forces team would not fall apart when a couple of team members died, nor would they need a “regular” “non-special ops” unit to hold their hand and get them out of trouble. I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure it would be the other way round. Secondly; this is another attempt by appalling US writers/directors attempting to show that the rest of the world are inept retards who couldn’t even operate a pencil if you ducktaped it to their hand.  Akin to the U-571 problem; No America, you did not capture the first Enigma machine in World War II, and while we’re on the subject of WWII films, no you didn’t win WWII on your own either. This might surprise Americans under the age of 20, but there was more than one country on the “allies” side.

The film basically has no story line, other than watching the bomb disposal team blow up or diffuse countless IED’s. We go through 138 minutes just for Will to return to the US and show us that he’s having trouble adjusting to civilian life and doesn’t love his baby anymore. So he returns to Iraq to dispose of more bombs. You could have just told me that 2 hours ago and I could have watched something else. Although to be fair there were a few good scenes including two people blowing up. Actually, those two scenes were really the only good ones.

As a war buff I have to give this film at least 1 star, but that’s all it’s going to get from me. The acting was great; Jeremy Renner and Guy Pearce being two great actors who performed very well in this film. However the writers should have been banned from learning to read or write at primary school level. The special effects were pretty good and apart from the SAS fiasco it was on the whole pretty accurate to real life. Perhaps that’s what made the storyline so nonexistent.

1 Star

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