The Hurt Locker.
Hello all,
I just happened to rent this movie because it was a recent release along with another on the afternoons of the Academy Awards night.
It's one of these "Day in the Life of" ideas that I first noticed became popular in books and movies during the 80s. Idea, take a random day and follow the subject to record whatever may happen as slice of life...so to speak. The result could be extremely mundane or unexpectedly contain some significant moment. The point is unscripted spontaneity without any plan or expectation. This is what The Hurt Locker tries to emulate.
Okay, so what you get is a pastiche of varying personalities with all their quirks, often being silly, bickering, inter-confrontational and sometimes a bit nutty surrounded by monotony and punctuated with high stress points.
Well-written and acted, done in a documentary kind of style, the film is an unflashy view into the routine of soldiers living/surviving in a war zone and dealing with each others idiosyncrasies as well as random death.
Is it worth seeing? I've seen so much of this genre already and there was nothing new here. Not for me. For others, marginally yes. It's a good film, but should it have won the Academy Award? It doesn't seem to be on that level.
Cheers,
Merlot