The Hurt Oscar
It’s not often I get a chance to step out of my military/media analyst role and play film critic, but here goes. “The Hurt Locker” was NOT the best picture of last year. It was a good picture, perhaps a better picture than most, but not the best picture. And it was at best an imperfect reflection of the dirty, dangerous, deadly mission of American troops who’ve been fighting in Iraq the past seven years.
While I appreciated the film’s gritty verisimilitude and its evocative portrayal of the unremitting stress of irregular warfare, the movie is marred by its inaccurate depiction of some aspects of the military ethos. And that bothered me.
And yes, let’s acknowledge right from the outset, “The Hurt Locker” is just a movie, a Hollywood version of the war. Despite the fact it was written by a freelance journalist who embedded with U.S. troops in Iraq, it doesn’t claim to be “based on a true story”, or even “inspired by a true story.”* It’s a work of fiction. With a fictional maverick commander, who puts the lives of his fellow soldiers at risk to stratify his personal pursuit of justice, along with an apparent lust for a constant adrenaline rush.
That said, many people form their beliefs about historical events from entertaining, but historically inaccurate movies, such as JFK, or “K-19 The Widowmaker,” just to name two among dozens of examples. What most Americans know about Gen. George Patton comes largely from larger-than-life portrayal by George C. Scott’s, a portrait in many cases at significant odds with the facts.
“The Hurt Locker” is shot in that herky-jerky style that is intended to mimic the feel of a video from a small handheld camera, while invoking the jittery tension soldiers have when their head is on a swivel because danger is lurking in every shadow.
For me it was effective, in the sense that in felt like I was deployed Iraq. And like a tour of duty in the warzone, barely halfway through the movie I felt like: “I get the point. Can I go home now?”
The movie is at its best showing the harsh realities faced by U.S. troops who are asked to comport themselves with the highest standards of any of the world’s fighting forces, while facing an enemy with no scruples at all.
But it fails in showing how most troops live up to those standards, even though granted, it does include a lead character (with character) as a counterpoint to the cowboy “wild man” protagonist whole breaks all the rules.
As a movie, it also fails on a storytelling level. The story arc is flat. No one really grows, or learns, or even changes in the course the narrative. War changes people, but in “The Hurt Locker” no one changes. The “hero” goes home after deployment only to find that he’s confronted with too many choices in the cereal aisle of his local grocery store, so he signs up for another year of death-defying bomb disposal duty.
What was the point? The point seems to be there is no point. No point to war, that is.
So why did “The Hurt Locker” win Best Picture? Was it Hollywood voting for an anti-war movie? Is “Avatar” director James Cameron so unpopular with his fellow academy members they wanted to stick it to him by giving the Oscar statuette to his ex-wife? Or were the other nine nominees not all that great either. (“Avatar” also has a not-so-subtle anti-military theme, featuring a lantern-jawed caricature of a villainous mercenary commander devoid of conscience, compassion, or even a cursory understanding of Gen. David Petraeas’ COIN manual.)
What do you think?
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Tags: Hurt Locker, Oscars
