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Posts Tagged ‘Katherine Bigelow’

John Nolte

Review: ‘The Hurt Locker’

by John Nolte

Katherine Bigelow’s direction of “The Hurt Locker” is masterful and might very well place her back where she belongs, at the top of anyone’s list looking for a top-shelf action director. But that’s not enough to save the film from episodic plotting, jarring and unnecessary political statements, a troubling depiction of our troops and an even worse portrayal of the Iraqi people. This is a movie you want to like, but an unsettling after-taste lingers long after the thrill of the set-pieces fades.

Produced and scripted by Mark Boal (who embedded with a U.S. Army bomb squad operating in Baghdad), the year is 2004 and Iraq is a country under siege, thanks mainly to determined insurgents and roadside IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices) that seem to be everywhere and frequently come with nearby triggermen lying in wait for the opportunity to do the most amount of damage, preferably to American servicemen and women.  Charged with the dangerous and technically complicated job of defusing these bombs is a three-man EOD (Explosive Ordinance Disposal) team led by Staff Sergeant James (an excellent Jeremy Renner) and his squad mates Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Eldridge (Brian Geraghty). (more…)

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Posted Jul 2nd 2009 at 4:20 pm in Featured Story, Reviews | 104 Comments

Alexander Marlow

Review: The Hurt Locker **Updated**

by Alexander Marlow

Epigraph: a quotation set at the beginning of a literary work or one of its divisions to suggest its theme.

Epigraphs crop up occasionally in literature and film, but more frequently on the SAT exam.  In fact, I am using the definition of epigraph as the epigraph for this review.  If you are to the right of Bill Clinton, all you need to know about “The Hurt Locker” is its epigraph: “War is a drug.”

Incredibly, the mainstream media is trying to position “The Hurt Locker” as politically neutral.  The mainstream media are dense. “War is a drug.” Drugs are bad.  Thus, war is bad.  This is a left-wing film.  End of story.  Witness the first five seconds of the movie and read the epigraph; if you still have the audacity to trumpet its neutrality, you should be committed to an insane asylum or the newsroom at MSNBC.  (more…)

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Posted Jun 27th 2009 at 7:52 am in Media Criticism, Reviews | 16 Comments