"The Hurt Locker" begins with a sequence of how Staff Sergeant Thompson is killed during the process of defusing a radio controlled improvised explosive device (IED) in Baghdad. This sets the tone for a grim movie which details the travails of an US Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) unit (fancy name for bomb disposal squad) during the last 30 odd days of their company's posting in Iraq. Post the demise of their Staff Sergeant, the team is joined by Sgt William James, a battle tested veteran who had already seen some action in Afghanistan as well.

Initially the methods of Sgt James are not understood nor appreciated by Sgt Sanborn and Specialist Eldridge. Both of them think James is too trigger-happy and is more of a cowboy in his approach to defusal of bombs. But as time goes by, and as they see more of James in action, they develop a grudgingly high level of respect for him. While the movie itself doesn't have too many script-angles or story-plotlines to actually discuss or disclose in this review, suffice to say, it is not too hard to see why this movie won so many accolades.

Having said that, between Avatar and The Hurt Locker, I personally would probably not have given the Best Picture Academy Award to either of them. But then, I am not a member of the Academy nor does my vote count, so I will rest my case here.

Academy Award controversies aside, why you should watch this movie, is primarily to understand at least a little of what US soldiers currently serving in Iraq have to face on a daily basis. While it is easy for us to sit at our homes and criticize what the US govt is doing with its soldiers there, it is completely another thing to watch a reasonably realistic movie which pretty much depicts conditions there (at least from an EOD team perspective). The best part about this movie is the fact that it presents a no-frils version of a war movie (albeit a limited perspective only), and does not take any unnecessary twists or turns with the subject matter.

LAMBScore for this movie

Large Association of Movie Blogs

Related links

Wikipedia link to the movie
IMDB link
Box Office Mojo link
Rotten Tomatoes link

Trailer

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Labels: English Movies LAMBScore Movie Review Movies
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  1. the picture is perfect. awesome!!!!

    ReplyDelete

  2. Very nice movie review site.

    I would love to see you setup a profile at Rankography movies you can create a description of your site with a link to your blog.

    At Rankography, you can rank movies, create categories and discover great movies by reviewing others rankings.

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  3. Suspense is breathtaking. This movie is an absolute miracle to me as in the entire movie I remained stick to my chair holding it tightly. I recommend everyone to watch this movie for sure. Thanks for this nice review.
    Watch The Hurt Locker Online

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A couple of reasons why I watched ‘Before the Rains’ were Santosh Sivan, its director and Nandita Das, its lead character. While I am a huge fan of Santosh Sivan’s cinematography in almost all of the movies in which he collaborated with Mani Ratnam (Roja, Iruvar, Dil Se, Raavanan, need I say more), the fact that I had seen quite a few interviews of his and he came across as this amazingly imaginative person who knows how to get the maximum detail in each and every frame of his piqued my interest in him. Santosh Sivan is almost like an university of cinematography and the script that he picked up for this movie lent itself to be filmed extraordinarily beautifully.

The second reason that I watched this movie was Nandita Das.
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Now if you are a book lover and a regular reader of the thriller action genre of books there's no way that you could have missed reading "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" by Stieg Larsson. This book made the literary circles and the bestseller lists of the world go ga-ga sometime ago.

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