Great Ideas Gone Bad

Rating: 4/10 (10 October 2011)

The Hurt Locker is based on a great idea, that war is an addictive drug. And using an EOD (bomb squad) soldier in Iraq to show the effects of that addiction is an equally inspired idea. Further, it features some memorable scenes, in particular, the lead character bewildered by the array of breakfast cereals available in a grocery store, and talking to his infant son about his addiction.
But the scenes in Iraq (Jordan, if you're wondering) that are intended to be the dramatic center of the movie ruin the movie for me. Instead of presenting in a realistic, gritty way what must be in real life an almost unbearably tense job, the film instead creates unrealistic, even fantastic situations and sequences that take me out of the movie.
And it is a perplexing approach. The screenplay was written by Mark Boal, who was "embedded" with an EOD unit in Iraq in 2004. Surely he experienced enough drama in the real world of an EOD team that he could have written the movie The Hurt Locker should have been without going over the top.
Finally, another element that bears mentioning is the "shaky-cam" photography. It is hard to understand the appeal of that style, especially to the degree employed in The Hurt Locker. The unsteadiness and and repeated zoom in/zoom out perspective are so pronounced that the technique seems nothing more than a gimmick and detracts from the story.