I've been out of touch with Hollywood lately, but following all the awards, we finally watched "The Hurt Locker" last week. I thought it was a movie with a few weaknesses and a few strengths, but on the whole, it moved me.
The movie is about heroism in war, and about the adrenalin-rush of being in an intense war situation. I won't say I relate to a soldier who craves the adrenalin of being in a bomb squad in Iraq; but I thought him to be believable. And the movie put me in this soldier's shoes and read his diary of time spent in Iraq where nobody can be trusted and no place is safe. Of course, it was not a regular war movie - it was horrifying (without being gory), it was edge-of-the-seat stuff and it was a new "American-soldier's-unapologetic-point-of-view" on the war in Iraq.
But having said that, a war movie is a war movie is a war movie. Wars are always ugly; and they're uglier when fought in the middle of civilians; by soldiers from a culture & place so alien to the people they'r meant to be defending. In a way, a war movie set in Iraq might have well been set in Vietnam 50 years ago and it would've been almost the same; only the communists are now called terrorists and landmines are now suicide-bombers.
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2 comments:
last 10mins.. with few words dialogue.. its brilliantly done..
the more I try and avoid war movies, the more they get me......it's Arka's influence.....he grew up watching WW2 movies and passed on the interest to moi.......watched Valkyrie (I know I am always wayyyy, wayy behind everyone else when it comes to watching movies)recently and again the whole futility of war, whether fought for "business reasons" or to establish "racial supremacy", is so haunting......
will try and pick up "the hurt locker" sometime......
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