The Hurt Locker

I recently saw The Hurt Locker, which I thought was fantastic. I've seen some mixed reviews from vets (& Tom Ricks), mostly complaining about errant details & the implausibility of several scenes - but I reckon it's a movie that is more about capturing the feeling which by all accounts it nails. the, I dunno, zeitgeist, weltanschauung, Jungian complex, whatever. which I guess is what all good war movies strive to do. in this case not creeping jungle paranoia a la Platoon or the suffering/triumph combo of many WWII flicks so much as the endless gnawing uncertainty of not just when to shoot but who to shoot and whether or not to pull the trigger in the first place. as well as the uncertainty of why the hell you're there in the first place, what you're doing, who does & doesn't want to kill you, etc. etc. more than anything else I think it communicated really effectively just how great a burden has been shunted off onto a relatively small # of Americans for the last 7+ years.  

interesting that it was directed by Kathryn Bigelow whose films I'm a fan of - Point Break still kills it nearly 20 (!) years on - she brought that same twitchy nervous constant motion style to a much more serious topic, the Iraq War, & managed to fuse it w/a pretty high level of emotional complexity. keeping politics out helped a lot as well. the acting is largely fantastic too, all the principals certainly & a bunch of the cameos as well. hiring displaced Iraqis (it was filmed in Amman) to play the Iraqi roles & extras was a good decision.

I dunno I guess it really kicked up a lot of feelings in me - rage, sadness, but above all shame. The other day a friend emailed me a quote from a British counterinsurgency advisor to the effect that "the U.S. military is better than the country it serves". I reckon that's well true. Much, much better than the country it serves.

a few more thoughts on war movies (& hopefully some discussion) here for anyone interested