Well, I gotta say I was disappointed with this one...

I had high hopes for The Hurt Locker, but it ended up being more like The Confused Tedium Locker, or perhaps: Public Enemies: New Millennium Edition...

Plenty of cool bits unfortunately interlaced with such high-style artsy directing and wacked-out editing that story ends up being forced at gunpoint to take a back seat and put a blindfold on.

Yeah, perhaps one might be able to enjoy this as an exercise in avant garde filmmaking upon repeated viewings and lengthy theoretical study, but as a plain ol' movie experience The Hurt Locker is a bomb.

out of





(It's certainly interesting subject matter for a movie though - - bomb squad detail in a war zone. Many interesting scenarios were playing out in my imagination, during all the downtime I had while watching this particular movie's tedious take on it. I'd love to see a movie that handles this topic in a narratively exciting manner... )

Riveting. Kathryn Bigelow has made a fabulous film with no political agenda in mind that illuminates the experiences of the troops and paints a picture of the Iraq war. As others have said, this is foremost an action film and there are a number of extremely suspenseful scenes that threatened to make my blood pressure shoot off the charts. Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie and Brian Geraghty are all outstanding, and their lower profiles as actors helps to emphasize the everyman qualities of the characters. Thus far, this is the best film I've seen from this year. A-

I love the twit Bradley hated this film. I loved this film but I can;t it getting to oscars.

I really want to see this.

Why thank-you!

I do aim to twit people out of their stupor as best I can, though their enslavement to groupthink is almost absolute nowadays. Who would dare challenge the infallible authority of the all-seeing Oracle that is RottenTomatoes?!? Why would anyone want to see a movie and review it before reading any other reviews and opinions on it? Who would dare give their own honest self-formed opinion on a film?

And once again, I will watch the wave of glowing reviews wash up in the film's original release. And once again, as the years begin to pass and people view the film without the ubiquitous hype, I will watch the true reviews originating from an unfiltered viewing begin to appear.

BTW, I didn't so much hate The Hurt Locker, as I was simply bored by it...

People getting peeved that Bradley doesn't share in the WOKJ approved consensus is one of the tiredest running jokes on here. If he really is just doing it to get attention like some misguided souls assume, why bother responding?

Oooorrr maybe he just prefers movies that don't take themselves so seriously, and people should find another poster to constantly gang up on.


Anyways, I agree with the consensus - The Hurt Locker was a truly lush film experience. You can thank it to them filming over 1 million feet of footage. It took them two editors to put it all together, but the end result is rich and wonderfully suspenseful.

Kathryn Bigelow was doing a Q&A at the screening I attended. Predictably, she tossed aside all the questions about gender (this was part of a woman's film festival. A lot of the audience was clearly shaken by the first few minutes. I don't think a lot of the audience knew what they were getting into.) One thing she did say on multiple occasions is that this is a film about "the most dangerous job in the world." In that way, I think yoshue's comparison to Wages of Fear is very appropriate.

lol, you do have a point bradley, some people do follow the "groupthink" as you call it, and do not really deviate from opinion or consensus often. I would argue that I'm not one, but while I have rare exceptions I do tend to side with the popular reviewists opinion 90% of the time.
However I will simply say that deviating from the popular opinion simply to be varied is just as bad. non-conformists are just conforming in their own way.

You were at the Hollywood Theater Q&A? I missed it.

Now, I can officially say 'The Hurt Locker' is overrated.

The best film of the year? I think so.

This is pretty awesome. Bigelow knows intensity and tension. My only complaint would be that after an hour and a half of getting beaten by the action scenes, I was a wee bit worn down. But I suppose that fits in thematically ... there is no relief for these guys

Also the docs death was too predictable. Felt like he was in the movie specifically for that resolution

Overall though... quite impressive

yoshue when he likes a film is really quite beautiful and I love reading it.
I just wish it happened more.

6/10 -> C

I seriously hope I missed something, because The Hurt Locker doesn't deserve half of the praise and awards it's getting. It's not as bad as Crash, but it's certainly repeating what Crash did. To me at least.

It adds nothing new to the war drama genre. It says nothing relevant about the Iraq and the war against terrorism, though I'm afraid if the movie was more vocal about it or actually tried to decently portray either sides it would have been viewed as pro-whoever, so maybe it was safer not to actually have a say in anything, but in my opinion that's a poor filmmaking decision.

So they went the character route, show what they were going through. But they managed to come up with pretty cliched war drama characters. An adrenaline freak, a rational freak and a psycho. Standard bunch there. Adrenaline freak gets them into trouble, rational freaks tries to keep everything together and the psycho is just losing it and of course he's the one that gets hurt in the end (but they didn't have enough balls to kill him at the end). While I'm talking about the end of the movie I have to say I'm appaled how bad it is. And the movie is pretty much boring throughout. The false suspense never worked as you had a distinct feeling that the first guy is going to get blown into bits because they needed to start out with a bang and that the main three guys won't get hurt and will solve everything and all of the other characters were just screaming ''disposables'' – especially the shrink. Horrible and predictable script.

Bigelow did a good job on directing this. There's some great cinematography here too, I can't deny that (the first explosion in slow motion was especially breathtaking), so from the technical side it's definitely one of this year's best.

Hopefully it won't win any major Oscars. It doesn't deserve it.

If cliches bother you, I'm stunned you ranked Australia so high last year

Baz has been pulling cliches successfully throughout his small filmography. Bigelow failed to do so for me obviously.

7/10.

Loyal Meineid's 'review' made me laugh.

THE HURT LOCKER - 8/10 (A-)

Absolutely riveting! Probably the best war movie I've ever seen. That's not saying much though considering I'm not a fan of most. It's just not my genre. But this was pretty great. Kathryn Bigelow did an amazing job. Not to sound sexist, but it's really impressive that a woman made THIS film and did it so damn well. Give her Best Director now! She deserves it. Jeremy Renner gives a terrific performance and one of the best leading male performances of the year. I loved his character.

Really this is as great as a war movie gets for me. It deserves all of the praise.

The Hurt Locker is one of the best war films made. It is filled with intense and suspenseful action while also communicating one of the strongest scripts of 2009. Jeremy Renner deserves an Oscar nom for his role as SSgt. William James as his fearless determination never misses a beat and can be a little comedic at times with the way he makes the character his own. Anthony Mackie's role should also be recgonized as well at Sgt. JT Sanborn as he also doesn't miss a beat during his time on screen. Kathryn Biglow's direction is wonderful and some of the shots are beautifully shot and make the message that much greater. It defintely deserves to be considered for Best Picture and is one of the best of 2009. ****

By keeping it mostly apolitical and focusing on a very small group of individuals, this is the best Iraq war movie made yet. I'm still torn about what movie I want to win best picture.

***/****
I liked it.

C-

It was boring.

C-

It was boring.

You are boring.

Of all the words anyone could ever use to describe this film, I believe boring is one of the most inane. If you are blind and deaf, than yes you may be bored watching this. Or if you hate film as a medium, than I can also understand that feeling.