Wednesday, January 20, 2010

The Hurt Locker hurt me

Last night, my boyfriend and I watched The Hurt Locker, a critically acclaimed, rumoured to be Oscar-worthy movie. Well, my dearest Sassies, we were sorely disappointed. Warning: if you really enjoyed this movie, reading the rest of this post may be somewhat unpleasant.

The movie began, and I waited. Waited to see what everyone was talking about, this supposedly brilliant, near-perfect war movie. That moment never came. It was a series of bland, repetitious scenes. That's all. 

Soldiers find bombs; macho, daring, renegade soldier disarms bombs. Interspersed among these scenes were completely unoriginal gun fighting scenes: in the streets of Baghdad, in the desert, blah, blah, blah. And the icing on this dry, tasteless cake was the tacky male machismo. Please. We were starting to think this was a pro-America, pro-war movie. Somehow, I don't think that was the point.

It's one of those instances where I'm scratching my head wondering what all the critics loved about this film. I would categorize it as a piece of crap. I was bored and completely untouched by the events unfolding before me.  Unless that was the point - to demonstrate that we are now bored with and untouched by war. If that's the case, then this film was a success. 

Apocalypse Now, Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan, The Pianist. These were war movies. They brought something new to the table, grabbed hold of you, and made you look at the ravages of war. Not so with The Hurt Locker. It felt like a promotional video for the American military.

We sat through the whole thing, hoping against hope that it would get better. It didn't. Even Ralph Fiennes' brief cameo couldn't save this movie. Once it was over, I declared that if The Hurt Locker wins Best Picture at the Oscars this year, I would throw myself down our stairs. If there's anything I've learned from this, it's never to trust movie critics. Those are two hours of my life I'll never get back.

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