Movies a Bite at a Time #2 – The Hurt Locker

For a time, I had the idea to view some war movies with my daughter. Then I tried to figure out what I would feel comfortable with a four year old watching. The closest thing I could come up with was an animated telling of the story of Helaman and the 2000 Stripling Warriors. Regardless of the awards and honours bestowed upon any movie, my wife has told me many times over that if I want to watch war movies, I would have to do so alone. She hasn't watched all of "The Dark Knight" because it gave her such a fright. I can't even think what would happen to her if she tried to watch The Hurt Locker.

Many war films have illustrated the famous phrase attributed to William Tecumseh Sherman, "War is hell," but The Hurt Locker puts a different twist to it with their tagline, "War is a drug." The movie chronicles the final month and a half of an Explosive Ordinance Disposal (EOD) team's rotation, the power struggles they have within the team, and the toll the conflict has on each soldier, with the emphasis on Sergent First Class William James. While most people live in fear that every minute they stay in Iraq could be their last, James takes it all with stride and relishes each moment he has in the field. Borderline reckless, but extremely good at his work, such to the point that his arrogance and addictive behaviour nearly gets his fellow soldier killed in action.

The amount of explosives in the movie outweigh the amount of explosions, if that makes sense. There were only four explosions in the entire film, though there is one scene where they are called to investigate the aftermath of a detonation. The most intense parts where the bombs that don't explode. There is a very palpable sense of urgency and the cinematography is done so well, it feels like you really are a part of the action.

Working in an office is not the same as working and living in a base camp comprised of trailers, but stretching out the movie over the course of a week did give me a bit of insight to how my brother-in-law described his time in Bosnia., "Days of mediocrity punctuated by second of sheer panic." Compressing forty days of service into a two hour movie would remove a lot of the boring bits, though there is a scene where they are doing test blasts. Yet you never see movies about people writing up reports or drafting letters.

All My Circuits: The Movie doesn't count.