The Hurt Locker - HellcatBetty's Take

I hadn't gotten around to writing my thoughts on The Hurt Locker movie yet, but watching the Oscars tonight spurned me into action. For those who don't know, The Hurt Locker is a movie that focuses on Army EOD (Explosive Ordinance Disposal) soldiers disarming bombs in Baghdad, Iraq in 2004. And it just won the Academy Award for Best Picture.

I watched the movie about a month and a half ago, and liked it. It's very emotional and you can feel the tension of the situations. Pictures I'd seen from my husband looked like the Iraq I was seeing on the screen, and I saw a bit of some of hubby's friends in the faces of the characters. On a personal level, I identified with a scene in which the main character (played by Jeremy Renner) goes home and he's standing in the cereal aisle at a grocery store staring at rows of boxes looking as if he wondered why any of it mattered. Hubs and I have had to leave grocery stores a couple times (mainly right after he returned from Afghanistan the last time) because he suddenly felt overwhelmed.

There were parts of it that I balked at because I knew they weren't realistic, but hey - that's Hollywood right? I hadn't given it a second thought until a few days ago when I got the chance to talk to hubby on the phone for about an hour (YAY!) and we discussed the movie. He had nothing good to say about it. He was irritated and offended and proceeded to tell me a laundry list of inaccuracies present in the film.

For starters, soldiers are wearing ACUs (the current uniform) throughout the movie, whereas in reality those uniforms were not yet standard issue in 2004. Seems like a simple thing that the film's producers could have sorted out pretty easily by consulting military personnel from the time period, hubby says. There was also a massive disregard for rank structure in the film, one scene in particular in which a soldier punched his superior in the face and no consequences were leveled. Anyone with remote knowledge of the military would understand - that wouldn't happen. One of hubby's biggest gripes was the way ground forces (i.e. Infantry) were depicted in the film. The scene in particular that actually offended him was one where the EOD arrived on scene and ground forces had abandoned their vehicle and were hiding out in the courtyard of a nearby home waiting for the EOD to get there and saunter up to the bombs and start cutting wires. As an Infantryman, hubby assured me that would never happen.

His list went on and on, and I began to consider that whether or not the film appeals to the viewer's emotions in a way that would inspire sympathy and gain a bit of understanding of what our men and women go through overseas, it may not be the way in which our soldiers wish to be represented. The inaccuracies were great enough that he couldn't see past them to find the merit in the film. For that, I certainly cannot blame him. The military is all about precision.

His comments and our discussion made me re-think my views on the movie. I watched the Oscars this evening with mixed feelings. I have to say that by the time it was announced that the film had won Best Picture, I was sort of disappointed. I re-watched the movie after the Awards ceremony ended and after having that conversation with the hubby, all I could see were instances that would never actually happen. A soldier running of the FOB (Forward Operating Base) to chase down the family of a little boy he'd thought had been killed, and then re-entering the base without being shot by friendly fire while running through the shadows. It just wouldn't happen... not by any stretch of the imagination.

So now, having talked to hubby and re-watched the movie myself, I am left with some conflicting feelings. I do believe that this film has its merits. It gets at the raw emotion and confusions and chaos that our men and women experience in battle. It gives viewers a mental image of what many of our soldiers have seen and heard and asks them to think about the situations from a perspective outside their own (often limited) knowledge of war. Above all, I think it forces the viewer to contemplate what it might be like to return from such intense situations, to a former life and choices that seem mundane and unimportant. It gives the viewer some insight into that man they see standing in the grocery store staring the rows of cereal.

That said, I do think that in some ways this movie does a disservice to our veterans in that it doesn't give an accurate portrayal of what they do or how they do it. The rank structure is ignored, the tactics they use are often completely off base, and the roles of various MOS's are either diminished or exaggerated. I can understand their concern, and their desire for a movie that can achieve the goals that The Hurt Locker does, but without misrepresenting their jobs and their lives in such significant ways.