Well-made movie

Rating: 8/10 (8 March 2010)

My first instinct when watching a movie about the U.S. Army is to join the crowd of checkers mentally noting all the things that don't agree with my experience. I have gradually learned to stifle this, realizing that even the most devoted filmmaker has to make some concessions to the understand of civilians. There's a language within the military that doesn't filter out very well to something as brief as a typical feature. I also know that a movie like "The Hurt Locker" isn't intended to be documentary.
However, as I watch "The Hurt Locker" barely a day after its win at the Oscars, I am interested to see how the movie weaves several vignettes in a cohesive story, and it manages to show several different types of experiences that soldiers have in the cities in Iraq - the uncertainty of each moment, the complacency that one has to fight during the last days in country. More, it shows a lot of different approaches to dealing with the potential threats - some good, some bad, but mostly just mediocre in varied ways.
The main characters, the three members of the explosive ordnance team, are believable. One is bravado with a layer or two underneath, another the strict rulebook soldier and the third just looking for some direction and the plane headed south.
In its essence, the images and the filming of this movie are refreshingly and disturbingly accurate. In its details, it brings together very rare experiences into a very small team of soldiers, which makes it seem as if every soldier has days like these - rolling through the city of Baghdad in a single truck, coming home to some whiskey, occasionally alluding to trips to brothels. I can say some of these things happen more often than others, but rarely to the same person in such close succession.
But again, this is Hollywood, capturing the most interesting possibilities of the place and the characters, and creating a mood and setting that supports it. It isn't reality, but then, neither is "Avatar."