Hurt Locker: Realism That Rivals Godzilla

I don’t often rent movies just because of all the buzz, but I do make exceptions. When “Hurt Locker” came away with Best Picture and Best Director I figured, how could I lose? Alas, that was the same question I asked myself in Vegas when the dealer showed a three and I doubled down for my expected “can’t lose” blackjack.

 Director Katheryn Bigelow’s vision of Iraq is pretty superficial. She advances on the premise that the audience already knows why America is tromping around in this predominately Muslim country which is rather unfair, since thus far not even our leaders have figured that one out. Anyway, the story follows the exploits of Army Sergeant First Class William James, who finds himself assigned to a group of soldiers whose job is to find and defuse unorthodox explosives or IED’s (pronounced Eee EE Deeze). For some reason the Iraqis don’t cotton to having foreigners kicking down their doors and blowing up their sewage treatment plants, so they go around planting IED’s to give the occupiers something to distract them from kicking down doors and blowing up sewage treatment plants.

One thing to know about these military EOD units (Explosives Ordnance Disposal) is that they always manage to sucker one guy into doing the actual disarming of the explosives, and in Hurt Locker, the group that gets Sgt James has just lost their fall guy in an explosion, despite his wearing a really odd looking space suit, which he had thought would render him invincible in case of a blast. (see “sucker” above).

 Right off the bat we learn that James is a renegade: he’s petulant, uncommunicative, profoundly retarded and has a death wish. He can’t get it through his head that his new EOD unit is a team. He’s like the high school quarterback who refuses to throw a pass and insists on hogging the ball no matter what the score and no matter what the coach tells him. On the first mission with his new unit, he scoffs at the idea of using a robot to safely disarm an IED, which has been reported by either a well meaning Iraqi, or one who has sold tickets to those who want to see another American turned into ground beef.  Dripping testosterone, James dons the bulky space suit and toddles toward the roadside bomb.

 Note: In the opening scene of the movie we viewers had it drummed into our skulls that communication is the key to a successful mission in this dangerous game of explosives buggering. Constant contact between the guy in the space suit and his team mates lets everyone know exactly how far he is from the device, precisely who is watching the action from the sidelines and instantly alerts everyone to any action the space suit guy will take before he does it, thereby eliminating any unwanted surprises. James does none of this. Apparently in his younger days he was the butt of god knows how many “knock-knock” jokes so every time someone asks him a question (“how far are you from the device?”) he flashes back to “knock-knock” at middle school and instantly clams up. This causes Sgt Sanborn, the Black Guy on the EOD team, to mutter curses and rail against James much as did the football coach in James’ murky past.

 In Bigelow’s Iraq, we are re-acquainted with the Ugly American. Much to the disgust of the occupying soldiers, most Iraqis only speak the language they’ve been getting by with for about the last 6,000 years and have deliberately avoided learning English just to annoy the latest invading army. Since Iraqi interpreters in this movie are as scarce as snowboarders, the soldiers make do by shouting at the Iraqis. See, it’s a well known fact that if a “furriner” doesn’t understand American, well, you just keep repeating the same phrase louder and louder until he does. Works every time.

After presenting James as a purely self centered and generally despicable character for the first hour of the movie, Bigelow belatedly realizes that at this point the audience couldn’t care less if he gets dismembered by an IED or even buried alive by his own team members. In a jolting plot U-turn, James is given a soul; he suddenly cares deeply for a 12 year old street urchin who sells faulty pirated DVD’s to passersby gullible enough to take a chance. You know… like our Sgt James.  (See “profoundly retarded” above). Oh, and the kid also totes a soccer ball around, hence his nickname, “Beckham”. James lurches unconvincingly toward empathy with this pre-teen thug who competes with Iraq’s feral cats for sustenance in the war torn city. He has as much use for James as James has for him, which creates a symbiotic relationship reminiscent of head lice on a virgin scalp and about as endearing.

 Bigelow’s movie is peopled with individuals of dubious character and intelligence. At one point James and his squad stumble upon a stranded SUV surrounded by mercenaries who speak with British accents. Despite his stunted intellect James eventually figures out that these Blackwater stand ins aren’t Iraqis, but even he is puzzled by their plight: flat tire but no lug wrench. It seems that one of the hired guns has at some point hurled their only lug wrench at a band of attacking insurgents, which puts his IQ rating pretty close to that of our cowboy sergeant. These mercs are now huddled around the wounded SUV trying to figure out their next move. It has been a long and unproductive meeting until the arrival of the Americans who announce that they might have a suitable lug wrench in their Humvee. Alas, after 15 minutes of clanking and grunting the mercenaries figure out that the wrench is the wrong size. I would hate to see this brain trust try to untangle a cluster of last year’s balled up Christmas lights. One of James’ team announces that there may be another different size lug wrench in the back of their Humvee they can try….well, sure, since they always carry one that fits their vehicle lug nuts and one that doesn’t, right? Certainly sounds like something our Pentagon would go for.

Anyway, at this point and much to our relief, several of these incredibly dense mercenaries are put out of their misery by long range Iraqi snipers. Who knows, maybe one of the snipers is cheesed off for having had a lug wrench bounced off his noggin. James and Sgt Sanborn team up and take on these very efficient shooters with a sniper rifle of their own. They hunker down with Sanborn as the shooter and James as the spotter. As the hours drag by we get to see James share a box of juice with Sanborn. There’s only one straw, see, and remember that Sanborn is the Black Guy. This allows us to see James’ tolerance for other races, which is calculated to get him another plus on Bigelow’s score card.

 Remember James’ sudden doe eyed interest in the thuggish street urchin? Well, during another sweep through dusty residences, James comes upon the corpse of a male child with wired explosives stuffed inside him like Gummy Bears in a Mexican pinata. The bloody face of the corpse looks just like his young pal, Beckham. And about 50,000 other street children. This so incenses James that later that night he engages an Iraqi taxi to drive him to the bad side of town on a quest to find Beckham’s home; that would be Beckham the urchin not Beckham the British footballer. The mere fact that there is a bad side of town in a city that makes Detroit look like the Vatican speaks volumes about what we’re doing in Iraq in the first place. But never mind. In the dead of night the taxi wheezes to a halt in front of a crumbling structure James has decided must be Beckham’s residence. As he gets out he orders the taxi driver to “wait here” and to the surprise of no one except James (remember, “profoundly retarded”) the taxi promptly becomes a set of rapidly receding tail lights in the darkness. James pulls his trusty sidearm and proceeds to search the residence. He confronts a middle aged Iraqi scholar who offers him a drink and a seat at his table, referring to him as a “guest”. This unexpected courtesy knocks our hero’s mental state further off its wobbly axis and he goes jogging through the center of town holding his pistol, looking as out of place as a mercenary toting a lug wrench. He winds up back at his barracks, sullen and withdrawn…. like before only now he frowns a lot. This could be serious.

 As the film lumbers toward its inevitable (and eagerly awaited) conclusion, James leads several of his credulous team mates on a suicide mission that involves a lot of narrow alley ways, dark streets and shaky, hand held camera work. When the men become reticent and question the validity of the mission, James starts channeling Mel Gibson in Braveheart, exhorting his companions to be all they can be. Shamed into submission the team grudgingly goes along. To the surprise of no one except James one of the team members gets shot and the mission, whatever it was, is aborted. Later we see this wounded man being dumped into a helicopter while berating James as a loose cannon and mental defective. “This is what happens when you get shot!” he yells at our mentally shortchanged protagonist, who apparently up until this moment didn’t realize that his being an idiot in a war zone could negatively affect others.

 Toward the end of the film, with his tour ended, we glimpse James back in Ruttabaga, Alabama or wherever the hell he’s from, playing kissy face with his toddler son while his long suffering wife positively beams. Can this modern warrior be satisfied with mowing the lawn and shopping at the Piggly Wiggly? Can the captain of the Titanic be satisfied with ferrying passengers across the Atlantic without crashing into icebergs? In the final scene we see James back in Iraq doing what he does best, risking the lives of others for another 365 day tour.

 Hurt Locker is to Platoon what Plan 9 From Outer Space is to 2001: A Space Odyssey. Katheryn Bigelow may do better with her next film, she certainly can’t do worse.

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