8-06-09 Movie Review: The Hurt Locker

Noncommercially, we have a new series of vintage shorts about how we should live our lives, dating from the 40s and 50s, called "social guidance films," usually shown in schools, with titles like "How to Say No: Moral Maturity," Monday nights in The Donut Whole, 1720 East Douglas, at 8 pm. And Thursday, the Cyberdome in Exploration Place has a special movie night featuring a Bono Look-Alike contest and somethings called Cosmic Light Shows, involving Pink Floyd. There are three features regularly on a revolving schedule too complicated for me to go through; call 316 660 0600. But all three show between 6 and 10 this Thursday in Exploration Place. This weekend is busy with double features in the Orpheum, 6:30 pm, Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca Friday, and Audrey Hupburn in My Fair Lady and Roman Holiday Saturday. And Sunday -- no longer Tuesday, SUNDAY -- The Blank Page gallery shows Ingmar Bergman's rather savage Virgin Spring, about rape and revenge in old Sweden, at 7:30, 917 West Douglas.

And commercially, we have the highly acclaimed Afghanistan war movie The Hurt Locker.

The Hurt Locker is unusual partly because it is limited almost entirely to military operations and partly because those operations are in effort to prevent violence, not perform it. The characters are involved in defusing bombs so they will not explode, and their work is insanely dangerous because the bombs are improvised and often unique and there are snipers guarding them. Booby traps on anything whatsoever, including the dead and even the living.

There is heavy emphasis on blood and pain; The Hurt Locker is not an easy movie to sit through. Everything is dirty and dusty, frequently bloody, and there is no rear area to retreat to for rest or safety. I can't testify to its accuracy as to what it going on in Afghanistan, but it is utterly convincing and I have heard no doubts about it. Its' gripping, at times almost unbearably suspenseful, and without including a sentence about it, compellingly antiwar.

But it pays a heavy price for its integrity and concentration. Because we see the characters almost exclusively in sequences of extremely tense action, we never get to know them enough to identify with them. What few bits we see that are not in combat include voluntary brutality to each other that may be intended to illustrate psychological damage caused by war, but may also suggest the kind of people who would volunteer for such a nearly suicidal service.

A few scant suggestions for a more humane side to them seem to be just setups for more ultimate horror ahead. Our hero seems to be in love with death, but may be in denial or merely pathologically brave; one thing certain is that he is of his own, and his colleagues resent that. You almost have to admire him, but he's hard to like.

Technically, The Hurt Locker is nearly crippled, for me, by dedication to the Hand Held Camera til I almost got a headache trying to keep my eyes on what was going on. At one point, a mere walk down a street was illustrated by a bounce for every footstep, an effect I dare suggest no normal person has ever felt. There are endless pan shots that also do not resemble human reality: try it some time, panning a scene without continually focusing your eyes on this that and the other detail.

But despite these gestures toward Art with a capital A, The Hurt Locker will sting you with a picture of war at its most unbearable, and make you feel that this has just got to stop.

You won't soon forget it.