A country with no sense of Shame

Rating: 1/10 (27 December 2010)

I fail to understand why Kathryn Bigelow chose Iraq as the setting of her latest action film. Because this is what 'The Hurt Locker' is. An action film, solely conceived to give us rushes of adrenaline as we watch a team of US bomb experts risk their lives to de-activate lethal traps set by the local resistance/terrorist groups. In devastated Baghdad everything is a threat, everything hides potential death. In this climate of constant tension we are manipulated to forget who is doing what, who is where and why, and we are simply directed (manipulated?) to feel the tension experienced by the bomb squad, with whom of course we end up identifying. Bigelow's main characters are not regular US Marines (it would have been too hard otherwise to avoid what these people are really doing there). She picks a bomb squad. These are *good guys*, they are in Iraq to do good, and even when they misbehave they end up feeling bad about it, because, in the end, Americans are always SO good, aren't they ? Forget about why these people are there in the first place, forget about the fact that over 100.000 people have died in this war, forget about the millions injured, the devastation of the country, the dissolution of any form of institution (good or bad) that has plunged the country into civil war. War per se is a (generic) destructive addictive drug in which both sides are victims, and who cares if there are direct responsibilities involved (like sending thousands of troops across the globe to do God knows what, other than kill and destroy, and then vote again for the same president who started all this). Of course, for Bigelow war has only victims and no winnersbut guess what? Americans are more victims than everybody elsewho was not disgusted at the site of the dead Iraqi kid with bombs sewed in his stomach? It's about the horrors perpetrated by the *terrorists*. But how about showing us some Abu Ghraib style treatment, Mrs Bigelow ? How about some Iraqis getting water boarded? How about Guanatanamo? How about the thousands killed by US road patrols 'by accident' ? Iraqui women getting raped by Marines anyone ? Too little adrenaline there ? I guess so. The Hurt Locker is the quintessential prove of the fact that Americans have finished processing the Iraq war and have, once again as always in the history of their country, pretty much absolved themselves. to the point of rewarding a director who chooses a contemporary, devastating war scene (with deep American responsibilities involved) as the setting for her action film.