The Hurt Locker

It took me a few months after the Oscars to watch The Hurt Locker (Best Picture), directed by Katherine Bigelow (Best Director, first woman to win the Oscars for Best Director).

It took me so long because war movies aren't really my type. I find them long, complicated and difficult to understand, but this was surprisingly easy to watch. The main characters are few and defined, revolving around a 3-man EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) team.

Plot Summary:

The Hurt Locker is an American war film about a 3-man US bomb squad, set during the Iraq War. The 3 guys are: team leader Sergeant William James, a black guy Sergeant Sanborn, and a junior guy Specialist Owen. The plot follows their tour of duty as they go around Iraq defusing bombs while facing the threat of insurgency.

What I thought about the movie (or rather, what I didn't like about the movie):

The expression "the hurt locker" is a pre-existing slang term for a situation involving trouble or pain, which can be traced back to the Vietnam War. According to the movie's website, it is soldier vernacular in Iraq to speak of explosions as sending you to "the hurt locker".

1) Firstly, I didn't like the plot because it's more like a one-man show revolving around the universe of team leader Sergeant William James, his arrogance from the beginning, his complete lack of regard for protocol, his failure as a team leader to protect his subordinates, his obsessive-compulsive-disorder and lastly, his obsession of going to war. If you get a leader like this, then all I can say is you're really in THE HURT LOCKER = DEEP SHIT.

2) I don't really like movies that are made up to be too dramatic and therefore look fake, and this is one of them. It's like CSI where 1 or 2 people can do everything from collecting evidence to interrogating witnesses to becoming the human encyclopedia of the lab. CSI is not in the Oscars, this IS. Therefore I expected the cases in this movie to be a little more realistic and a little less dramatic. Some of the fake parts include the car on fire scene which was easily extinguished with one fire extinguisher.

3) Tension built up in first part of the show was good. But second part was not good because it became a little expected.

4) Too many questions, too few answered. Don't really see a followup in the "body bomb" part.

Any comments from those who've seen this?