The Hurt Locker

Finally got around to watching last year’s Best Picture. And yes, after Saturday night’s viewing I agree with that accolade. Also with the tagline on the DVD box, “A Near-Perfect Movie.” If you like this kinda stuff, I think you’ll love the film. Even if you don’t, I recommend a watch, if only to get some kind of feeling – however Hollywood – of what our boys are doing over there.

Yes, I watched it with a grain of salt. I realize that war movies, everything from The Sands of Iwo Jima to Saving Private Ryan, are not a hundred-percent typical of what true war is like. (I personally do not know what true war is like, and, God willing, I or my family never will.) Images and scenes are amped up and thrown into a pressure cooker to keep your palms sweating and your buttocks on the edge of your seat. I understand that, and I agree with that, because, after all, we’re shelling out money to have some entertainment, however slap-in-your-face macabre and gritty it may be.

From what I’ve read, The Hurt Locker follows that pattern. Yeah, a lot of it doesn’t make sense to vets, and the soldiers portrayed don’t exactly logically behave as their real-life counterparts. But I also read that it is the most realistic portrayal of the Iraqi war experience to date. Another bonus is you don’t get the Liberal Sucker Punch * anywhere. I kept expecting it; this is, after all, a movie about the Iraq War. George Bush’s War. I kept expected the Oliver Stone treatment. You know, some American soldiers would rape an Iraqi girl, or massacre some doe-eyed innocent bystanders, but unless I’ve gone completely blind, I didn’t see any of that. For that I’m grateful, and for that I’m recommending the film. Yeah, some of our soldiers are represented as gung-ho crazy or psychologically fragile, but hey, it is a Hollywood film after all.

The biggest take-away I took away from the film is no laughing matter. Not at all. And that is this: that there is Evil in this world. Capital-E Evil. Despicable, vile, disgusting, anti-human, anti-life, monstrous evil in this world, and a good portion of it resides in Iraq and the rest of the Arab world. There are men, women, and, almost incomprehensibly but nevertheless true, children, who want to kill me and you. Who want me and every member of my family – and yours – dead.

That is one reason why I agree with Bush’s aphorism that we must fight them there or fight them here. We all may disagree with tactics, I hope we don’t disagree on that basic proposition. Though I know that there are those who don’t believe this Hurt Locker take-away. Did you hear of the Columbia students booing and heckling the Iraqi war vet who dared vocalize this sentiment on their campus?

Anyway, superb movie. Well worth the investment in your time. (Of course, there is plenty of graphic violence, so watch only if you have the stomach for it. And several scenes pull at the heartstrings.)


* Visit the blog Big Hollywood for your daily dose of Liberal Sucker Punches in today’s film.