Day 3: A Look at The Hurt Locker

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

DAY 3, MOVIE 1:

The Hurt Locker (2009), directed by Kathryn Bigelow. This is a movie I’ve seen a couple times, I remember I first saw it in theaters July 2009, and when it was over I thought to myself, “There won’t be a better movie all year.” In other words, I thought it was great. If a director can create suspense throughout a film, then chances are I’ll love it. And Bigelow gave us some sheer nail biting suspense in this movie, in addition to accurately portraying the extreme dangers that soldiers face every day. Though it’s not the thriller aspect that I remember right away whenever I talk about The Hurt Locker. It’s how it portrayed the “war is a drug” point of view that’s been talked about in past movies, but never actually shown to the fullest extent. I think this is because in previous war movies, home in the United States has always been established as normal and the war was shown as something out of the ordinary. While in The Hurt Locker, war is the normal everyday life for the characters, and as seen in the last minutes of the movie, back home in the States is what feels out of place. I will never forget that momentary confusion when the story shifts without warning from Iraq to the United States, how the tone switches from dangerous to mundane, and we as an audience are thrown into something completely different from everything prior. I admire The Hurt Locker for the masterful suspense it displays, but I respect the film for the emotional weight all that suspense adds to the ending.