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The Hurt Locker is a brilliant movie that shows us exactly why we need to get over our addiction to fighting, and sometimes starting, wars.
The Hurt Locker is not a great war film. It doesn’t glorify combat or condemn battle. It does not try to explain why conflict exists. It does not salute the dead or mourn their deaths.
It’s an explosive and honest rendering of what happens in war zones. The film, directed by Kathryn Bigelow, focuses on the experiences of a group of U.S. soldiers in Iraq. In the prologue, New York Times reporter Chris Hedges says, “… war is a drug.”
Then we meet the addicts—two casual users and a junkie. But sitting there, screening it in the dark with three friends and a room full of strangers, I suddenly realized that many of us are enablers, if not pushers.
When the biggest box-office hit of the summer is a fictional Armageddon between out-sized machines and the human race (Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, over $200 million in box-office receipts in the first week), and when some game-making mental midgets decide it’s OK to design a video game around the very real, very bloody 2004 battle of Fallujah (Six Days in Fallujah, which thankfully has been shelved), I think we have reached a societal acceptance of war that condones and promotes it.
Bigelow’s film points no fingers and presents no grand metaphor. Nothing about winners and losers, victory or defeat, missions accomplished or left unfinished. Every day the soldiers of Delta Company go out and try to detect, defuse or detonate bombs. Besieged Iraqi citizens, themselves victims of the same bombs, dispassionately observe the efforts.
The trio at the center of the film—Staff Sergeant William James (Jeremy Renner), Sergeant J.T. Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Specialist Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty)—are soldiers we rarely ever see or witness. James is the wildcard who parachutes in when the original bomb tech is, well, blown up. The shy Eldridge, who barely gets out alive, is along for the wild ride. He’s not addicted to the potent cocktail of arms and violence like James and Sanborn. And as pumped as Sanborn can get, he is an amateur compared to the adrenaline-embossed, reckless James. Is James trying to commit suicide when he breaks protocol while dealing with explosive devices? Maybe. But you can’t take your eyes off of him.
There is an undertow of testosterone and racial animus in the way James and Sanborn consistently clash. But it never colors the story. Critics of the film say there is not enough narrative, and Bigelow, who I’ve been a fan of since 1987’s Near Dark, has just strung a series of disjointed scenes together.
But that is war. There is no coherent narrative. If you try to impose some grand design, you will have committed a deadly mistake. It’s something the late Robert McNamara learned way too late.
Nick Charles is a regular contributor to The Root.
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It does not salute the dead or mourn their deaths. online games
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"I like freeing people from oppression. Do you? You're not a Nazi are you? I'd have dropped bombs on all the Afrikaners in South Africa. What would you have done, Nick Charles?"
Dearest Commentator.
Please explain which wars freed people from oppression. Seriously. I've been racking my brain for two minutes trying to come up with one. Please do not reference the American Civil War, I'd like for my Great Great Grandfather to remain peacefully unrolled in his wooden box.
Also, the Nazi thing... ick. It's hard enough to have one decent argument nowadays that doesn't devolve into random charges of participation in the National Socialist German Workers Party. I have read the article seven times, I can declare that it is 100% fascist free. Also, on what basis are you accusing him of being a Nazi, the fact that he doesn't devote a paragraph that starts with "Just let the record state, I love oppressed people, and the Rambo series was AWESOME!"
Anyway, let's take a trip to the way back machine. You've got a ton of bombs, thanks to your cousin Jim Bob, who always provides you with those fireworks every fourth of july. You got one of those World War 2 Bombers, we'll say a B-29. The Afrikaners are still being dicks about the whole Nelson Mandela thing, and they say "No one has the sack to do anything about it." You drop a whole ton of payload onto them. What happens next?
Well you'd probably kill a ton of innocent people, including the one or two Afrikaners who feel uncomfortable about the whole apartheid thing, and alot of South African blacks who were just trying to get through their day without somebody fucking with them. Because that's the problem with bombs, they're unreliable. They don't see race, they don't see religion, they don't see anything because they're inanimate. Wow, looks like you solved it alot better than the sanctions and soft political pressure, and the strength and will of an entire nation that cried out "We're taking our future into our hands through nonviolence."
War is hell, man. Don't let your ignorance and lack of imagination fool you, nobody wins. Especially when the top military advisors are taking advice from people with a hard on for casualties. Read a book, why don'tcha?
I have no problems helping those less advantaged than myself so I have to say no. But then, I get confused when people say social programs. Isn't everything in the government a social program including police, fire, military, roads, highways, water supplies, sewer systems, SSI, medical care for the aged folks that built the country we inherited, schools, universities, foster care for children, etc.
I myself use a good number of these so I certainly can't say I don't want to pay for them. As a society we have decided these things are important to everyone because EVERYONE uses them, or at least a mix of some of them, all the time. I do not think it would be fair for people to say, I am only going to help pay for the ones I want at the moment. When you were a child you needed a local school, at some point in your life you needed a cop, changes are a fire rescue team has helped you or someone important to you, our military is more than busy protecting the countries interests, someday you may need SSI and medical care. Everyone needs these social programs.
Heck, I moved to my current home well after all my children were raised and had homes of their own, why should I have to pay for schools? Answer, because its the right thing to do for our society. The fact is, of all the industrialised world, US taxes are the lowest and the federal government represents only about 4% of the nations wealth. Thats tiny compared to other countries. No, I have no beef about the taxes I pay and in truth my only real complaint is the fact the wealthiest do not pay far, FAR more.
Sorry but my life is not all about me, its also about the people and lives I touch while I am here and hopefully I can leave it better than I found it. Be honest, in the end what else really matters? Dollars? Naw....
I like that idea. Would it apply to social programs to? Only those who vote in favor of them have to pay?
No fan of war either but unfortunately most wars are necessary. Some wars are financially driven. Some cultural, tribal, racial, and so on and so on. We are almost at critical mass so you will begin to see (or not see depending on your ability to process the info that is fed to you) manufactured wars to cut population growth. Code name "survival of the better"
Oh sorry, Let me get to the subject of the glorification of wars. It's only capitalism. Who wants to stop to have a conscience. The no.1 selling video games are war themed. Hollywood glorifies killing because it sells. What good is the right to bare Arms if you never get to use it. killing becomes a right of passage for every new generation. Whats gory to adults is nothing to teenagers now a days. They get desensitized to it at a very young age.
Never saw the film but sounds interesting. I'll put it on my to watch list.
As a vietnam vet I know full well how quickly the public forgets the horrors of war and is ready to do it all over a gain in a couple decades.
My take on it, before going to war there should be a vote and everyone that votes yes goes FIRST!
"The Hurt Locker' is a brilliant movie that shows why we need to get over our addiction with starting and fighting wars."
I like freeing people from oppression. Do you? You're not a Nazi are you? I'd have dropped bombs on all the Afrikaners in South Africa. What would you have done, Nick Charles?