There's a debate raging over the The Hurt Locker. In short, critics love it; Soldiers and veterans not so much.
Critics love the film in part for its supposed accuracy. Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times described the film as "overflowing with crackling verisimilitude." David Denby of the New Yorker claimed that The Hurt Locker "will be studied twenty years from now when people want to understand something of what happened to American soldiers in Iraq."
I sure hope not.
As Brandon Friedman wrote on VetsVoice, "if you know anything about the Army, or about operations or life in Iraq, you'll be so distracted by the nonsensical sequences and plot twists that it will ruin the movie for you." Or as Christian Lowe explains a bit more harshly, ""Some of the scenes are so disconnected with reality to be almost parody."
In short, The Hurt Locker is a tactical, not to mention historical, mess.
Many war movies have unrealistic elements (read: Inglorious Basterds), why does this one touch a nerve? The Hurt Locker is essentially an action film--A.O. Scott and other critics have described it as such--when it didn't need to be. The stories and lives of regular Soldiers could fill countless mini-series worth of drama and comedy without "enhancing" the truth as Kathryn Bigelow does in The Hurt Locker. You don't have to sensationalize the military to make it exciting; it already is.
The Hurt Locker's very premise is misleading. The military doesn't disarm bombs while wearing bomb suits and cutting wires, we place a brick of C4 explosive on top. One push of the button and the IED detonates safely. True, some situations call for disarming an IED up close, but nine times out of ten a robot motors out to it while the Explosive Ordinance Disposal (EOD) techs sit in their trucks. Why? Because this is safer, quicker, cheaper and more efficient than disarming it. It isn't as exciting, but it is what happens.
But safer and more efficient does not equal safe. In Afghanistan, I patrolled a nine kilometer road where an IED had already taken a Soldier's legs. Every day we patrolled that road we felt fear, the fear that at any point an IED could detonate underneath our vehicle. We found multiple IEDs, but one still gets me. As we dismounted to clear the sides of the road, one of my Soldiers stopped me and pointed forward. About ten meters dead in my path was an IED pointing right at me. We waited two hours for EOD to arrive by helicopter. The resulting explosion was spectacular. The entire episode was filled with the tension The Hurt Locker tries to achieve. That find by itself would make a great short film, no extra Hollywood flair needed.
My main worry, though, is that this film will define the Iraq War the way Apocalypse Now defines the Vietnam war. If critics/pundits/whoever tell the public The Hurt Locker is realistic, it will write a false history of the war. It doesn't mean that you can't learn about this war without deploying to it. But most will never study it, and war films will define their images about this war. I don't want this film to define those false images for us.
As David Denby wrote above: soldiers will be watching this film years form now. They need to know what actually happened. So does everyone else.
The Hurt Locker Link Drop:
This isn't a comprehensive link drop, but we hope it covers the major pieces of the debate.
The Huffington Post, on behalf of VetVoice, first launched the debate. Former Soldiers Kate Hoit and, one of our favorites, Brandon Friedman, posted two well aimed critiques at the accuracy of The Hurt Locker.
In response, two retired EOD techs James P. O'Neil and James Clifford disputed the charge that Soldiers are upset with the film. The most interesting point about these two rebuttals is that they only speak for two communities: the retired and EOD. EOD personnel love the film because it made their acronym known for the first time ever. The retired community doesn't know much either way because they haven't deployed. Much like critics, to them this film is as real as it gets.
Before those pieces, and some after, were a few excellent posts on the blogosphere. The general consensus from The Best Defense and Army of Dude is that the film is good overall, but has a few glaring flaws. Bouhammer, on the other hand, devastates the film and comes much closer to my own personal views. Finally, I have never read this blog, but they do a very good critique of the film.
After the blogosphere broke the topic, the main stream media picked it up. USA Today, Newsweek and the PBS Newshour all ran pieces describing the debate without injecting much of their own opinion. 60 Minutes didn't mention it in this piece on Kathryn Bigelow.
It isn't a blog, but the goofs page on IMDB absolutely hammers the film. It doesn't have a view any one way, and some of the criticisms are beyond nit picky, but it is a great resource of the various errors.
Finally, if you want to see all the reviews of this film check out the metacritic page.
Update: Just found this interview by screenwriter John Boal over at Creative Screenwriting magazine. In it, Boal explains that accuracy is one of his main concerns for him as a screenwriter, and bemoans other plot-oriented films he consideres less realitic. This is as much his concern as it is ours.
Just want to say, las tmonth i predicted this would get nominated and I was so right. But even further than that, back in Sept. I told some guy T met at a charity event that “The hurt Locker” would win best picture, and he was like “i doubt it.”
Whose laughing now!