Underwhelming and empty exercise

Rating: 5/10 (20 September 2010)

Despite the critical accolades showered on this film, it seems hard to take its Best Picture Oscar seriously in light of its amazing competition - pretty much all of which succeeded far better in their respective goals. I had the pleasure (or displeasure) to watch the film with my cousin - an Afghanistan and Iraq War veteran. He was already picking apart the film's much-heralded "authenticity" before the first 30 minutes were up and stalked out in a huff after 1.25 hour never to return. Some of the errors I would not have noted without him; others were so glaring that the viewer would need to be headless to overlook the illogic. Given that this film's "realism" was one of the trumps critics and fans were citing, it was a bit of a surprise that such could be so easily dismissed. The story - such as it is - focuses on an EOD team in Iraq having to contend with reckless loose cannon Jeremy Renner. Renner is quite good in the role - the writing and the film itself are not up his level. Much ink has been spilled about Kathryn Bigelow becoming the first Oscar-winning female director. I think this moment should have come sooner, but not with Bigelow. From the start, critics have invented superlatives to describe Bigelow's resume, but I thought she was a hack when she made the cult film Near Dark and her subsequent entries like Strange Days, Point Break, K-19:The Widowmaker, etc., have not changed my opinion. She combines all of the worst aspects of macho-man male directors without any mitigating factors. It is not a compliment to say that any of Bigelow's films - including this one - could have been made by a run-of-the-mill male action director. Bigelow consistently sacrifices logic and coherence for the next big bang or money shot. Arguably, my biggest annoyance is what is missing from the film. Agree or disagree on the Iraq War, but no one can dispute that it is one of the most controversial political events in U.S. history. A pre-emptive war initiated by the U.S. on trumped up evidence against a country that posed no legitimate threat and which repercussions are still thundering throughout the U.S. and the Mid-East. A really amazing film could (and should) be made on exploring such fall-out. How ironic then that the first award-winning film to set itself during the war has absolutely no view on it whatsoever. The characters we meet have little to contribute on what or who they are fighting. It is little more than a glorified testosterone-fueled action film with nothing to say about much of anything. Unless, of course, one takes a cynical approach and assumes that Bigelow and company's point is that we should thank goodness for endless warfare or else what would men like Renner's character - who are ill-suited for either family life or contributing to peaceful society on a daily basis - possibly have to do with themselves. Strangely that does seem to be the theme of her film and it is as disheartening and wearisome as her direction. One also trembles to think that now that Bigelow has made such an uncontroversial film on such a controversial subject and given the approach such cache, how many directors will now inundate us with films set in the Iraq War (a la Vietnam) that will also have absolutely nothing of interest to say?