I love America. I love everything it professes to stand for. I love Americans. There, I said it. But damn, y’all have some strange expectations from life. I’m completely confused, for instance, by the tone of a number of recent Iraq War movies – most notably Hurt Locker, though Stop Loss also springs to mind. It’s like people are suddenly startled that it’s all a bit of a monumental fuck-up, that war is nasty and good people get badly hurt. I just don’t get such belated surprise about something so damn obvious. So whilst Hurt Locker is indeed a technically proficient, visually / viscerally dynamic and probably Oscar-worthy production, I couldn’t get my head around the tone of nagging indignation without shrugging my shoulders and asking in my best Jewish Mother voice: “Now?”
Basically, Hurt Locker’s about a Bomb Squad technician with a bit of a god complex. He can’t adjust to life outside of the red zone and he sacrifices friends, family and sanity to keep doing what he’s doing. That’s the good bit. What we’re also supposed to believe is that not only does he defuse bombs with his bare hands, he’s also a sharp shooter, a murder investigator, a master of evasive driving techniques and a bare knuckle fighter. It’s like CSI in combat fatigues; entertaining but a bit of a stretch to suspend disbelief. And compare his sheer multi-tasking brilliance and resolve with the dumb-ass bumbling assorted British allies who are capped like flies….. Ah well, you can start to see my problem with it all, perhaps? Hurt Locker filmed in Jordan for a bit of Middle Eastern authenticity. So can you give me a Hooah? No, I thought not.