The Hurt Locker

William James takes over as the leader of the Us Bomb squad with only a certain number of days in their tour. He is taking over after Staff Sergeant Matt Thompson has killed during the diffusing of a bomb. Will doesn't follow the rules, he lives by his own and that puts those around him in danger.

Staff Sergeant William James: There's enough bang in there to blow us all to Jesus. If I'm gonna die, I want to die comfortable.

I have been reading everywhere this is up for best picture of 2009. It will surely get a nomination now that the number of nominees has been raised to 10. Will it win? My answer is going to have to be no. I say this because the film didn’t capture me and drag me away. Yes it was intense, but I felt like the attachment factor was missing. I understood the difficulties presented to these men, I just couldnt seem to get into what it was they were doing.

It was an intense action film, and didn’t manage to take the step into greatness. I was hoping for more emotion, more physical response to what they were doing. There were two scenes based off of emotion. Yes I realize emotion plays into the tense moments, but I felt disconnected to those emotions, perhaps I just did not grasp how intense those situations are. But is it not the job of the film to want me to grasp the intensity. I did grasp the difficulty of being an army man, but not how much it affected these guys.

That comes down to the leads, and they didn’t relay these emotions. Yes this film will be a front runner come Oscar time, and at other award shows. But 2009 had better films, with better acting that hopefully win out over this one. I realize this is a great film to those who have been to war and understand its complexities, but I just failed to grasp how emotionally gripping war was. The final scene of war was the only one that did in a film that finds its final runtime at 131 minutes. They should have went for that sooner, rather than later.

Still I can see why people like this film. It was emotionally charged, but the emotional aspect is what I was hoping for. I guess I have more of a flare for the dramatics then the intense action. All in all a solid film, but not as solid as others.


8/10