It Failed To Hold My Attention

Rating: 5/10 (31 May 2010)

This is truly one of those Oscar-winning movies that causes a lot of people to go - "huh?" A case can be made for Kathryn Bigelow being named Best Director. She managed to portray a gritty and realistic look at modern-day Iraq, and the challenges of the US soldiers stationed there. The subject matter is somewhat unique - I can't think of any other significant movie that's used the Iraq War as its subject matter. But in the end, the story here lets us all down.
The movie opens with a great deal of tension. A U.S. Army bomb squad scheduled to be rotated out of Iraq in 38 days has to deactivate a roadside bomb. We have no way of knowing what will happen. You watch, and you're quite into the movie at this point. But it becomes far too repetitive. They deactivate a lot of bombs. There are deaths, and the atmosphere of uncertainty - can anyone be trusted in this insanity - is real, but it's just too much over and over again. None of the characters are well developed. One has a son and one wants a son but that was never taken far enough for me to really care about any of them. There's no particular story being told and there's no real resolution to the movie (which, I admit, is perhaps a pretty good statement about this particular war.) We just watch the countdown until this unit goes home, only, at the end of the movie, to see them replaced by another unit. So, yes, there's the pointless, repetitive cycle of a meaningless and totally unnecessary war being depicted, but frankly after about half an hour my attention was wandering.
Best movie? I really have to question that.