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The Hurt Locker--no spoilers

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Front-Ranger:
This movie is being forecast as the movie with the smallest audience to ever win Best Picture, if it attains that award on Sunday evening at the Academy Awards. It has nine nominations, the same as Avatar, with which it is vying for the award.

I went to the theater tonight to see The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus once again, but it wasn't showing, so I saw The Hurt Locker. Within minutes of the movie beginning, my heart was pounding, and there was scarcely a break in the suspense and horror for the whole movie.

The story, acting, and characters were very believable, yet there was high drama, pathos, and meaning. I caught myself being cynical about the story, which concerns soldiers in Iraq who work in a unit that defuses bombs and IEDs. For instance, when a soldier confessed that he regretted he hadn't married his girl and had a baby with her as she had wanted, I thought, "Uh oh, that guy's never going to make it." When two soldiers developed a hate/love relationship, I thought, "One of them's a goner for sure." But the movie didn't stick to a formula at all.

I found myself dreading the music, wishing I could shut it out. Because the music was so portentious and added immensely to the sense of danger. The cinematography also contributed to the sense of impending danger. The camera would scan the scene, and stop fleetingly on small details. I found myself suspecting everything I saw. Where was the bomb? Was it in that piece of trash? Around that corner? In the minaret? It was coming, I just knew it! I was on the edge of my seat thru the whole movie.

The movie, and the team, went from awful horrible task to task, each one more horrifying than the one before it. And each task presented greater unknowns and unthinkable challenges. Then, suddenly, the deployment was over and the soldier was faced with the daunting task of selecting a cereal box from a seemingly endless row of almost identical cereal boxes. The soldier is putting his son to bed and muses that one day, he will grow up, and maybe there will remain only one thing that he still loves. What is that one thing? It is revealed, and it will surprise you.

No, it was never explained what the hurt locker is, as far as I could tell. I thought it was perhaps akin to the heart locker, a place where you put your heart and your humanity for safekeeping while you had to do unspeakable things. Maybe someone who has read the book can say.

Clyde-B:
I saw The Hurt Locker a few months ago.

I couldn't wait for it to be over.

Kathryn Bigelow's speciality is in getting the audience to feel what the characters feel, and she's extremely good at it.  This is one long adrenaline rush that just when you think it can't get any worse, it does.  It's 131 minutes of unrelenting tension, disarming bombs, where sudden death may happen at any second, and you have no way of knowing who among the crowds of locals are friend or foe.
   
It's very well made, very effective, but it's not for everybody.

Fran:
I just finished watching it.  What an intense movie!  Totally different than what I expected.  I wonder if it will get "Best Picture."


--- Quote from: Front-Ranger on March 05, 2010, 11:35:57 pm ---No, it was never explained what the hurt locker is, as far as I could tell. I thought it was perhaps akin to the heart locker, a place where you put your heart and your humanity for safekeeping while you had to do unspeakable things. Maybe someone who has read the book can say.

--- End quote ---

I was wondering about the meaning of "hurt locker," too.

I found this:

The Hurt Locker : Interview
MARGARET: Well, I'm curious about the title, to start with.

KATHRYN BIGELOW: The Hurt Locker directly translated means the place of ultimate pain and it's a term that Mark Boal, when he was on the embed in Baghdad with the explosive ordinance disposal team, would use from time to time mentioning... "If this particular ordinance were to detonate, we would be in the hurt locker."

Kelda:
Its on my list after reading this Lee!

serious crayons:

--- Quote from: Front-Ranger on March 05, 2010, 11:35:57 pm --- For instance, when a soldier confessed that he regretted he hadn't married his girl and had a baby with her as she had wanted, I thought, "Uh oh, that guy's never going to make it." When two soldiers developed a hate/love relationship, I thought, "One of them's a goner for sure." But the movie didn't stick to a formula at all.
--- End quote ---

I loved the way the opening scene plays on the audience's expectations regarding movie characters and actors, setting you up to understand that nobody is safe. Then there's another scene, later in the movie, that does it again.

I thought the hurt locker, at least in the literal sense, was the box that the main guy keeps under his bed.

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