The Hurt Locker

I have a problem with this film. It derives all of its atmosphere and suspense from the banal fact that a bomb might (or might not) go off at any time. Its characters are uninteresting, the dialogue is horrible and the dramaturgical framework almost non-existent (it’s just a series of situations that the characters facing death have to survive). On the other hand, these very flaws make it all the more realistic and valuable as a testimony from the given places. Maybe all this movie needed was to decide whether it wanted to be an exciting thriller or an interesting docudrama. (20/12/2009)

It's a mystery to me how this brilliant flick didn’t get a wider audience response. What Stone's Platoon meant for an "alternative look" at the Vietnam conflict, Kathryn Bigelow's film means for the current U.S. Army mission in Iraq, and for its guys, who are there trembling for their lives and counting each day until the end of their tour of duty. The film doesn't moralise, it doesn't lecture, it just offers blood, sweat, frustration, the dust of Iraqi roads, fear of death and general paranoia, where even an Iraqi with a camera can be a potential terrorist. Not since Mendes's Jarhead has there been such a good military-themed film. (13/05/2009)

Let’s make a war movie based on Kathryn Bigelow: We’ll create a setting for a scene and flesh out the location to the last detail. We'll spend the rest of the day explaining to eighty extras what they're supposed to be doing in that location and that they're not supposed to notice the strange people with cameras running around. At the end, we'll put the lead actors on the first marker and explain which way to go and what to do. If a cameraman brings a stabilizer or, heaven forbid, a tripod on set, he'll have 10% of his salary docked. Repeat seven times and we have a feature film. The Hurt Locker could have been perfect if it hadn't stumbled on two things. On a second viewing, we already know that all of the film's visual attributes have been exhausted in the first scene, and from there on the film repeats an established routine. Secondly, despite all sincere efforts, the catharsis comes only in individual scenes through their denouement, but there is no way left to clean up the corners of the whole construct. I wouldn't want to be Cameron coming home from the studio where he's spending his third summer and being told by his old lady: "Tea, where have you been? I put the Oscar on the fireplace, if you don't mind. I'll tell you, that year in Jordan, when we were filming that Hurt Locker, it was hell. I caught dysentery from falafel six times. Yeah, and I went shopping today and I forgot which cornflakes you like. So I grabbed the ones closest to hand. Can you believe they had a whole rack of fucking cornflakes...?" (05/03/2010)

The individual sequences are adrenaline packed and Kathryn Bigelow does a good enough job with the “will it explode or not” dilemma to push the viewer into their seat through the simple movements around the mise-en-scène. Unfortunately, the episodic scenes of the life of an elite unit are pasted together in an attempt at a story where the emotions don’t work due to the weak profiling of the characters, while the attempt at a moral insight is not very successful either. It is realistic, probably (fortunately, I can’t judge), but the constantly shaky camera doesn’t work as ingeniously as in other films and actually disrupts the leisurely built atmosphere of an environment where every movement is dangerous. Jeremy Renner’s performance keeps things afloat, providing the viewer some depth they can hold on to. 65% (04/05/2020)

Full Metal Jacket for the new millennium – militant, cynical and predatory. A ballbusting documentary drama about a war-addicted people, about overgrown boys for whom normal life is far too normal. Bigelow loaded a cart full of naturalism, the hot Iraqi atmosphere and brilliant acting. This type of dynamically filmed war drama has been lacking since the days when Scott filmed Black Hawk Down. Like him, Bigelow leaves aside the moral assessment of the conflict and instead goes deep into the characters' psyche and adds a solid portion of irony (something that was missing in Black Hawk Down). There is great portion of raw fight scenes and sweaty dialogues of the average soldier for two solid hours. The Hurt Locker is not trying to get to the heart of the Iraq war, but rather simply capture the strange soul of a warrior. And in this respect, Kathryn Bigelow did a better and more responsive job than her male colleagues. In addition to balls, the film also has empathy... For me, The Hurt Locker is one of the American film highlights of 2009. Perhaps even the best. (07/02/2010)