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| Topic: Triumph of the Swill: "The Hurt Locker" | |
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The Motion Picture Academy's choice of "The Hurt Locker" as best film of 2009 is a sad commentary on the movie business as well as America's unwillingness to face the ugly truth about itself nearly a decade after 9/11.
"The Hurt Locker" is about a U.S. Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) unit operating in U.S.-occupied Iraq in 2004, one year after the invasion. They get called in to disarm improvised explosive devices (IEDs) of all shapes and sizes: homemade chemical explosives, old bombs looted from Iraqi military arsenals, even roadside bombs planted inside bodies. The EOD unit in "The Hurt Locker" also comes under fire from Iraqi resistance fighters. The setting is inherently political, yet director Kathryn Bigelow studiously insists that her movie isn't. "Did you want to make sure that the film didn't divulge into choosing a political stance?" an interviewer asked her. "I think that was important," she replied. "There is that saying, 'There is no politics in the trenches,' and I think it was important to look at the heroism of these men." Soldiers exhibit extraordinary courage in every war, on every side. Sam Peckinpah's searing 1977 film "Cross of Iron" successfully makes the case for heroic behavior--bravery, anyway--on the part of Nazi forces participating in the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1943. So there's nothing wrong with Bigelow's basic assumption. It should be possible for a moviemaker to "look at the heroism of these men" despite the fact that the cause for they're fighting is evil. The trouble with "The Hurt Locker" is that it, like too many other American war films, whitewashes history. In this film neither the EOD unit at the center of the film or soldiers belonging to other units ever make a mistake that kills or seriously injures an Iraqi civilian. You keep waiting for it to happen, and you'd almost be OK with that one stray shot. Like the camera that put the audience behind the killer's mask in "Halloween," Bigelow has created a claustrophobic, soldier's-eye view ominous with paranoia, all too justifiable. It's hot and dusty. Everyone's dog-tired. You can almost taste the stress. Her camera jumps from one potential threat to another: is that garbage on the side of the road just litter? Why is that guy on the roof of the building across the street staring so intently? Even the perfect set-up for the accidental killing of an Iraqi civilian--while defusing a roadside bomb, an observer goes for his cellphone--turns out to be justified. The Iraqi was an insurgent, using the phone to detonate the charge. And this is where a supposedly apolitical film turns into a nasty bit of pro-U.S. propaganda. As the film critic Andrew Breitbart writes, "The Hurt Locker" stripped its Iraqi characters of their humanity "and turned [them] into story-props: villains, victims, foul-mouthed hustlers, or strange alien beings who keep an awkward distance and mourn the dead by yelling savagely at the sky." For the purpose of this small film about a group of guys, one of whom is (laughably, as though such a character would be tolerated in an elite bomb squad unit) a go-it-alone cowboy who makes his comrades understandably nervous, it doesn't matter that they/the U.S. shouldn't be in Iraq in the first place. That can be for another film. (Indeed, it already was. David O. Russell's brilliant "Three Kings," a 1999 effort set in the 1991 Gulf War, presages the 2003 invasion and serves as its ultimate cinematic rebuke.) Yet creative liberties have limits. One is historical truth. Unless you're making a live-action cartoon like "Inglorious Basterds," you can't make things up wholesale. But "The Hurt Locker" does. It creates an alternate universe to the one real Iraqis lived under in 2004, in which U.S. troops took as much care not to hurt civilians as AIG took with our taxdollars. In the real world of U.S.-occupied Iraq in 2004, American soldiers were blowing away anyone who failed to slow down at (often unmarked) highway checkpoints. They were raping, robbing and murdering civilians for the fun of it. Countless soldiers recounted driving through towns and villages, randomly shooting at houses and people standing on the street. According to Iraq Body Count's extremely conservative estimate, between 8,000 and 10,000 Iraqis had been killed by April 2004. The truth was probably fiftyfold. Marine Sergeant Jimmy Massey, 26, testified in December 2004 that men under his command killed "thirty-plus" civilians within 48 hours while manning a checkpoint in Baghdad. "I do know that we killed innocent civilians," Sgt. Massey said, stating that his unit fired between 200 and 500 rounds into four separate cars. Each had failed to respond to warning shots and hand signals. In September 2004 the Knight-Ridder News Service reported that more Iraqi civilians had been killed by U.S. forces at checkpoints than by insurgents. "At the Baghdad morgue, Dr. Quasis Hassan Salem said he saw a family of eight brought in: three women, three men and two children. They were sleeping on their roof last month because it was hot inside. A military helicopter shot at them and killed them: 'I don't know why,'" said the wire service. The reason for the bloodshed was simple: U.S. troops had been trained to shoot first, ask questions later. They didn't care about the civilians they were supposedly there to liberate. "My platoon had to learn [checkpoint techniques] on the fly," wrote Marine Captain Nathaniel Fick in The New York Times in March 2005. "For example, once while driving through a town, we cut down a traffic sign--a bright, red octagon with the word 'stop' written in Arabic--and used it at checkpoints. Who knows how many lives this simple act of theft may have saved?" We don't see any of this in "The Hurt Locker," only good, confused American boys in uniform trying to muddle through a scary situation as best they can. It is sad that a film so devoid of texture can earn critical plaudits. It is sadder that so few Americans can watch such a picture without losing their lunch. Not only is the history it seeks to revise ridiculously recent, one can only shudder in horror at the thought of what Iraqis and other Middle Easterners will think when pirated copies start showing up at local bazaars. "The truth is 'The Hurt Locker' is very political," wrote Michael Moore. "It says the war is stupid and senseless and insane. It makes us consider why we have an army where people actually volunteer to do this." That's true. But the politics are terrible. And that's the wrong question. We need to stop wallowing in self-indulgent, sentimental pap about how bad war is for the U.S. military forces that fight them. After all, the U.S. has started every war it has fought since 1945. What we should be considering is what our forces do to others in the course of invading and destroying their countries. _______ Ted Rall Online: www.rall.com COMING OCTOBER '09: New graphic novel "The Year of Loving Dangerously" About author Ted Rall is the author of the new book "Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central Asia the New Middle East?," an in-depth prose and graphic novel analysis of America's next big foreign policy challenge. http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/27298/ted_rall/triumph_of_the_swill_the_hurt_locker_supports_the_troops_and_the_lies |
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Edited by
msharmony
on
Fri 03/12/10 02:34 PM
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Have they started making 'honesty' requirements for fiction?
I havent seen it, but I could only expect 'realism' if it is purported to be based on a true story. Sometimes entertainment is just that though,, entertainment. |
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Have they started making 'honesty' requirements for fiction? I havent seen it, but I could only expect 'realism' if it is purported to be based on a true story. Sometimes entertainment is just that though,, entertainment. the problem is fiction eventually gets mistaken for reality. I hate the Awards systems film makers use to judge and award movies. They are just guilds patting themselves on their own backs while real critical evaluations go by the way side. Take the movie Babel for instance. I thought it sucked for a number of reasons, the story line jumped around too much between three different lines, there was social commentary based on cultural views of westerners made on eastern life in two places, Japan and (I hope I remember this right) Afghanistan (Post Russian invasion) which were tainted because evidently the film makers of this stinker did not do their homework on the cultures properly (including the deaf community), and on top of that it screamed "Guns are Bad" like someone was yelling it at me with a bull horn in my face. Babel won awards although I felt it didn't deserve squat. Also "Happy Feet" was a real stinker. The main character does not ever get his adult colors (because they didn't want to loose his bow tie) and it slammed humanity for pollution and fishing (not over fishing) and made it seem like all of us run rough shod over the whole planet (even though humanity in general is but a lot of us are more aware of how bad we are as this planet's Stewards). To make matters even worst is a tap dancing penguin manages to change all of humanity's mind and we decide to mend our ways after a little dance? PLEASE! A dancing Penguin would wind up in a zoo on display faster than you can say "Where is my MONEY!" That is why I like independent and NON-Hollywood movies more than the "Huge new releases" we are having thrown at us. An honest movie would be a serious change of pace I would appreciate. The Movie 300 was chewed on a lot but the director made it clear from the beginning he was not historically accurate and was shooting for drama and visuals which were brilliant. Disney's Pocahontas? Suckfest from hell! Disney used to be about historical accuracy but look at the crap they have been putting out lately as well. F*** Hollywood! I just recently seen Alice in Wonderland and this is all I have to say. The visuals were great BUT Alice in Wonderland just got Fuc*ed up so badly they ruined the core story and I am sure if Mr. Stevenson were still alive he would be suing over the damage done to his story. I know I am opinionated but aren't we all??? |
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Good post. Maybe this is why I didn't like the movie much. I usually like movies that the critics rave about but this was not one of them.
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i guess we all have different musical tastes, but generally, I watch movies for entertainment value and read books when I am looking more for history and facts.
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It should be realistic if it delves into such a serious topic and takes itself so seriously. And it is based on a true story, the Iraq war. Like the author said, this isn't "Inglorious Bastards", which everyone knows is clearly not factual.
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It should be realistic if it delves into such a serious topic and takes itself so seriously. And it is based on a true story, the Iraq war. Like the author said, this isn't "Inglorious Bastards", which everyone knows is clearly not factual. well, as I said, I have not seen it. I dont agree that because a subject matter is serious, the story cant be fictional. Precious is about an abused girl, a serious matter that actually happens, but it is fiction. I am sure there are many facets of the life of an abused child that it didnt cover,,but how can one cover EVERY facet of a subject matter that is serious? In the end, for me, its about the story, the presentation of the characters, and how the story moves me,,rather it is based in detailed facts or detailed fiction. |
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The Motion Picture Academy's choice of "The Hurt Locker" as best film of 2009 is a sad commentary on the movie business as well as America's unwillingness to face the ugly truth about itself nearly a decade after 9/11. "The Hurt Locker" is about a U.S. Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) unit operating in U.S.-occupied Iraq in 2004, one year after the invasion. They get called in to disarm improvised explosive devices (IEDs) of all shapes and sizes: homemade chemical explosives, old bombs looted from Iraqi military arsenals, even roadside bombs planted inside bodies. The EOD unit in "The Hurt Locker" also comes under fire from Iraqi resistance fighters. The setting is inherently political, yet director Kathryn Bigelow studiously insists that her movie isn't. "Did you want to make sure that the film didn't divulge into choosing a political stance?" an interviewer asked her. "I think that was important," she replied. "There is that saying, 'There is no politics in the trenches,' and I think it was important to look at the heroism of these men." Soldiers exhibit extraordinary courage in every war, on every side. Sam Peckinpah's searing 1977 film "Cross of Iron" successfully makes the case for heroic behavior--bravery, anyway--on the part of Nazi forces participating in the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1943. So there's nothing wrong with Bigelow's basic assumption. It should be possible for a moviemaker to "look at the heroism of these men" despite the fact that the cause for they're fighting is evil. The trouble with "The Hurt Locker" is that it, like too many other American war films, whitewashes history. In this film neither the EOD unit at the center of the film or soldiers belonging to other units ever make a mistake that kills or seriously injures an Iraqi civilian. You keep waiting for it to happen, and you'd almost be OK with that one stray shot. Like the camera that put the audience behind the killer's mask in "Halloween," Bigelow has created a claustrophobic, soldier's-eye view ominous with paranoia, all too justifiable. It's hot and dusty. Everyone's dog-tired. You can almost taste the stress. Her camera jumps from one potential threat to another: is that garbage on the side of the road just litter? Why is that guy on the roof of the building across the street staring so intently? Even the perfect set-up for the accidental killing of an Iraqi civilian--while defusing a roadside bomb, an observer goes for his cellphone--turns out to be justified. The Iraqi was an insurgent, using the phone to detonate the charge. And this is where a supposedly apolitical film turns into a nasty bit of pro-U.S. propaganda. As the film critic Andrew Breitbart writes, "The Hurt Locker" stripped its Iraqi characters of their humanity "and turned [them] into story-props: villains, victims, foul-mouthed hustlers, or strange alien beings who keep an awkward distance and mourn the dead by yelling savagely at the sky." For the purpose of this small film about a group of guys, one of whom is (laughably, as though such a character would be tolerated in an elite bomb squad unit) a go-it-alone cowboy who makes his comrades understandably nervous, it doesn't matter that they/the U.S. shouldn't be in Iraq in the first place. That can be for another film. (Indeed, it already was. David O. Russell's brilliant "Three Kings," a 1999 effort set in the 1991 Gulf War, presages the 2003 invasion and serves as its ultimate cinematic rebuke.) Yet creative liberties have limits. One is historical truth. Unless you're making a live-action cartoon like "Inglorious Basterds," you can't make things up wholesale. But "The Hurt Locker" does. It creates an alternate universe to the one real Iraqis lived under in 2004, in which U.S. troops took as much care not to hurt civilians as AIG took with our taxdollars. In the real world of U.S.-occupied Iraq in 2004, American soldiers were blowing away anyone who failed to slow down at (often unmarked) highway checkpoints. They were raping, robbing and murdering civilians for the fun of it. Countless soldiers recounted driving through towns and villages, randomly shooting at houses and people standing on the street. According to Iraq Body Count's extremely conservative estimate, between 8,000 and 10,000 Iraqis had been killed by April 2004. The truth was probably fiftyfold. Marine Sergeant Jimmy Massey, 26, testified in December 2004 that men under his command killed "thirty-plus" civilians within 48 hours while manning a checkpoint in Baghdad. "I do know that we killed innocent civilians," Sgt. Massey said, stating that his unit fired between 200 and 500 rounds into four separate cars. Each had failed to respond to warning shots and hand signals. In September 2004 the Knight-Ridder News Service reported that more Iraqi civilians had been killed by U.S. forces at checkpoints than by insurgents. "At the Baghdad morgue, Dr. Quasis Hassan Salem said he saw a family of eight brought in: three women, three men and two children. They were sleeping on their roof last month because it was hot inside. A military helicopter shot at them and killed them: 'I don't know why,'" said the wire service. The reason for the bloodshed was simple: U.S. troops had been trained to shoot first, ask questions later. They didn't care about the civilians they were supposedly there to liberate. "My platoon had to learn [checkpoint techniques] on the fly," wrote Marine Captain Nathaniel Fick in The New York Times in March 2005. "For example, once while driving through a town, we cut down a traffic sign--a bright, red octagon with the word 'stop' written in Arabic--and used it at checkpoints. Who knows how many lives this simple act of theft may have saved?" We don't see any of this in "The Hurt Locker," only good, confused American boys in uniform trying to muddle through a scary situation as best they can. It is sad that a film so devoid of texture can earn critical plaudits. It is sadder that so few Americans can watch such a picture without losing their lunch. Not only is the history it seeks to revise ridiculously recent, one can only shudder in horror at the thought of what Iraqis and other Middle Easterners will think when pirated copies start showing up at local bazaars. "The truth is 'The Hurt Locker' is very political," wrote Michael Moore. "It says the war is stupid and senseless and insane. It makes us consider why we have an army where people actually volunteer to do this." That's true. But the politics are terrible. And that's the wrong question. We need to stop wallowing in self-indulgent, sentimental pap about how bad war is for the U.S. military forces that fight them. After all, the U.S. has started every war it has fought since 1945. What we should be considering is what our forces do to others in the course of invading and destroying their countries. _______ Ted Rall Online: www.rall.com COMING OCTOBER '09: New graphic novel "The Year of Loving Dangerously" About author Ted Rall is the author of the new book "Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central Asia the New Middle East?," an in-depth prose and graphic novel analysis of America's next big foreign policy challenge. http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/27298/ted_rall/triumph_of_the_swill_the_hurt_locker_supports_the_troops_and_the_lies This article is nothing but 100% crap. This author is just pissed off that a Pro War,Pro military,anti Liberal movie such as the Hurt locker is racking up awards everywhere it goes.Meanwhile your Left winging,anti liberal BS movies like Stop loss,lions for lambs,and other anti military junk is so bad hardly anyone notices. |
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I wasnt gonna bother seeing it but if madman is slamming it then I'll prolly like it
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The Motion Picture Academy's choice of "The Hurt Locker" as best film of 2009 is a sad commentary on the movie business as well as America's unwillingness to face the ugly truth about itself nearly a decade after 9/11. "The Hurt Locker" is about a U.S. Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) unit operating in U.S.-occupied Iraq in 2004, one year after the invasion. They get called in to disarm improvised explosive devices (IEDs) of all shapes and sizes: homemade chemical explosives, old bombs looted from Iraqi military arsenals, even roadside bombs planted inside bodies. The EOD unit in "The Hurt Locker" also comes under fire from Iraqi resistance fighters. The setting is inherently political, yet director Kathryn Bigelow studiously insists that her movie isn't. "Did you want to make sure that the film didn't divulge into choosing a political stance?" an interviewer asked her. "I think that was important," she replied. "There is that saying, 'There is no politics in the trenches,' and I think it was important to look at the heroism of these men." Soldiers exhibit extraordinary courage in every war, on every side. Sam Peckinpah's searing 1977 film "Cross of Iron" successfully makes the case for heroic behavior--bravery, anyway--on the part of Nazi forces participating in the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1943. So there's nothing wrong with Bigelow's basic assumption. It should be possible for a moviemaker to "look at the heroism of these men" despite the fact that the cause for they're fighting is evil. The trouble with "The Hurt Locker" is that it, like too many other American war films, whitewashes history. In this film neither the EOD unit at the center of the film or soldiers belonging to other units ever make a mistake that kills or seriously injures an Iraqi civilian. You keep waiting for it to happen, and you'd almost be OK with that one stray shot. Like the camera that put the audience behind the killer's mask in "Halloween," Bigelow has created a claustrophobic, soldier's-eye view ominous with paranoia, all too justifiable. It's hot and dusty. Everyone's dog-tired. You can almost taste the stress. Her camera jumps from one potential threat to another: is that garbage on the side of the road just litter? Why is that guy on the roof of the building across the street staring so intently? Even the perfect set-up for the accidental killing of an Iraqi civilian--while defusing a roadside bomb, an observer goes for his cellphone--turns out to be justified. The Iraqi was an insurgent, using the phone to detonate the charge. And this is where a supposedly apolitical film turns into a nasty bit of pro-U.S. propaganda. As the film critic Andrew Breitbart writes, "The Hurt Locker" stripped its Iraqi characters of their humanity "and turned [them] into story-props: villains, victims, foul-mouthed hustlers, or strange alien beings who keep an awkward distance and mourn the dead by yelling savagely at the sky." For the purpose of this small film about a group of guys, one of whom is (laughably, as though such a character would be tolerated in an elite bomb squad unit) a go-it-alone cowboy who makes his comrades understandably nervous, it doesn't matter that they/the U.S. shouldn't be in Iraq in the first place. That can be for another film. (Indeed, it already was. David O. Russell's brilliant "Three Kings," a 1999 effort set in the 1991 Gulf War, presages the 2003 invasion and serves as its ultimate cinematic rebuke.) Yet creative liberties have limits. One is historical truth. Unless you're making a live-action cartoon like "Inglorious Basterds," you can't make things up wholesale. But "The Hurt Locker" does. It creates an alternate universe to the one real Iraqis lived under in 2004, in which U.S. troops took as much care not to hurt civilians as AIG took with our taxdollars. In the real world of U.S.-occupied Iraq in 2004, American soldiers were blowing away anyone who failed to slow down at (often unmarked) highway checkpoints. They were raping, robbing and murdering civilians for the fun of it. Countless soldiers recounted driving through towns and villages, randomly shooting at houses and people standing on the street. According to Iraq Body Count's extremely conservative estimate, between 8,000 and 10,000 Iraqis had been killed by April 2004. The truth was probably fiftyfold. Marine Sergeant Jimmy Massey, 26, testified in December 2004 that men under his command killed "thirty-plus" civilians within 48 hours while manning a checkpoint in Baghdad. "I do know that we killed innocent civilians," Sgt. Massey said, stating that his unit fired between 200 and 500 rounds into four separate cars. Each had failed to respond to warning shots and hand signals. In September 2004 the Knight-Ridder News Service reported that more Iraqi civilians had been killed by U.S. forces at checkpoints than by insurgents. "At the Baghdad morgue, Dr. Quasis Hassan Salem said he saw a family of eight brought in: three women, three men and two children. They were sleeping on their roof last month because it was hot inside. A military helicopter shot at them and killed them: 'I don't know why,'" said the wire service. The reason for the bloodshed was simple: U.S. troops had been trained to shoot first, ask questions later. They didn't care about the civilians they were supposedly there to liberate. "My platoon had to learn [checkpoint techniques] on the fly," wrote Marine Captain Nathaniel Fick in The New York Times in March 2005. "For example, once while driving through a town, we cut down a traffic sign--a bright, red octagon with the word 'stop' written in Arabic--and used it at checkpoints. Who knows how many lives this simple act of theft may have saved?" We don't see any of this in "The Hurt Locker," only good, confused American boys in uniform trying to muddle through a scary situation as best they can. It is sad that a film so devoid of texture can earn critical plaudits. It is sadder that so few Americans can watch such a picture without losing their lunch. Not only is the history it seeks to revise ridiculously recent, one can only shudder in horror at the thought of what Iraqis and other Middle Easterners will think when pirated copies start showing up at local bazaars. "The truth is 'The Hurt Locker' is very political," wrote Michael Moore. "It says the war is stupid and senseless and insane. It makes us consider why we have an army where people actually volunteer to do this." That's true. But the politics are terrible. And that's the wrong question. We need to stop wallowing in self-indulgent, sentimental pap about how bad war is for the U.S. military forces that fight them. After all, the U.S. has started every war it has fought since 1945. What we should be considering is what our forces do to others in the course of invading and destroying their countries. _______ Ted Rall Online: www.rall.com COMING OCTOBER '09: New graphic novel "The Year of Loving Dangerously" About author Ted Rall is the author of the new book "Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central Asia the New Middle East?," an in-depth prose and graphic novel analysis of America's next big foreign policy challenge. http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/27298/ted_rall/triumph_of_the_swill_the_hurt_locker_supports_the_troops_and_the_lies This article is nothing but 100% crap. This author is just pissed off that a Pro War,Pro military,anti Liberal movie such as the Hurt locker is racking up awards everywhere it goes.Meanwhile your Left winging,anti liberal BS movies like Stop loss,lions for lambs,and other anti military junk is so bad hardly anyone notices. |
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The Motion Picture Academy's choice of "The Hurt Locker" as best film of 2009 is a sad commentary on the movie business as well as America's unwillingness to face the ugly truth about itself nearly a decade after 9/11. "The Hurt Locker" is about a U.S. Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) unit operating in U.S.-occupied Iraq in 2004, one year after the invasion. They get called in to disarm improvised explosive devices (IEDs) of all shapes and sizes: homemade chemical explosives, old bombs looted from Iraqi military arsenals, even roadside bombs planted inside bodies. The EOD unit in "The Hurt Locker" also comes under fire from Iraqi resistance fighters. The setting is inherently political, yet director Kathryn Bigelow studiously insists that her movie isn't. "Did you want to make sure that the film didn't divulge into choosing a political stance?" an interviewer asked her. "I think that was important," she replied. "There is that saying, 'There is no politics in the trenches,' and I think it was important to look at the heroism of these men." Soldiers exhibit extraordinary courage in every war, on every side. Sam Peckinpah's searing 1977 film "Cross of Iron" successfully makes the case for heroic behavior--bravery, anyway--on the part of Nazi forces participating in the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1943. So there's nothing wrong with Bigelow's basic assumption. It should be possible for a moviemaker to "look at the heroism of these men" despite the fact that the cause for they're fighting is evil. The trouble with "The Hurt Locker" is that it, like too many other American war films, whitewashes history. In this film neither the EOD unit at the center of the film or soldiers belonging to other units ever make a mistake that kills or seriously injures an Iraqi civilian. You keep waiting for it to happen, and you'd almost be OK with that one stray shot. Like the camera that put the audience behind the killer's mask in "Halloween," Bigelow has created a claustrophobic, soldier's-eye view ominous with paranoia, all too justifiable. It's hot and dusty. Everyone's dog-tired. You can almost taste the stress. Her camera jumps from one potential threat to another: is that garbage on the side of the road just litter? Why is that guy on the roof of the building across the street staring so intently? Even the perfect set-up for the accidental killing of an Iraqi civilian--while defusing a roadside bomb, an observer goes for his cellphone--turns out to be justified. The Iraqi was an insurgent, using the phone to detonate the charge. And this is where a supposedly apolitical film turns into a nasty bit of pro-U.S. propaganda. As the film critic Andrew Breitbart writes, "The Hurt Locker" stripped its Iraqi characters of their humanity "and turned [them] into story-props: villains, victims, foul-mouthed hustlers, or strange alien beings who keep an awkward distance and mourn the dead by yelling savagely at the sky." For the purpose of this small film about a group of guys, one of whom is (laughably, as though such a character would be tolerated in an elite bomb squad unit) a go-it-alone cowboy who makes his comrades understandably nervous, it doesn't matter that they/the U.S. shouldn't be in Iraq in the first place. That can be for another film. (Indeed, it already was. David O. Russell's brilliant "Three Kings," a 1999 effort set in the 1991 Gulf War, presages the 2003 invasion and serves as its ultimate cinematic rebuke.) Yet creative liberties have limits. One is historical truth. Unless you're making a live-action cartoon like "Inglorious Basterds," you can't make things up wholesale. But "The Hurt Locker" does. It creates an alternate universe to the one real Iraqis lived under in 2004, in which U.S. troops took as much care not to hurt civilians as AIG took with our taxdollars. In the real world of U.S.-occupied Iraq in 2004, American soldiers were blowing away anyone who failed to slow down at (often unmarked) highway checkpoints. They were raping, robbing and murdering civilians for the fun of it. Countless soldiers recounted driving through towns and villages, randomly shooting at houses and people standing on the street. According to Iraq Body Count's extremely conservative estimate, between 8,000 and 10,000 Iraqis had been killed by April 2004. The truth was probably fiftyfold. Marine Sergeant Jimmy Massey, 26, testified in December 2004 that men under his command killed "thirty-plus" civilians within 48 hours while manning a checkpoint in Baghdad. "I do know that we killed innocent civilians," Sgt. Massey said, stating that his unit fired between 200 and 500 rounds into four separate cars. Each had failed to respond to warning shots and hand signals. In September 2004 the Knight-Ridder News Service reported that more Iraqi civilians had been killed by U.S. forces at checkpoints than by insurgents. "At the Baghdad morgue, Dr. Quasis Hassan Salem said he saw a family of eight brought in: three women, three men and two children. They were sleeping on their roof last month because it was hot inside. A military helicopter shot at them and killed them: 'I don't know why,'" said the wire service. The reason for the bloodshed was simple: U.S. troops had been trained to shoot first, ask questions later. They didn't care about the civilians they were supposedly there to liberate. "My platoon had to learn [checkpoint techniques] on the fly," wrote Marine Captain Nathaniel Fick in The New York Times in March 2005. "For example, once while driving through a town, we cut down a traffic sign--a bright, red octagon with the word 'stop' written in Arabic--and used it at checkpoints. Who knows how many lives this simple act of theft may have saved?" We don't see any of this in "The Hurt Locker," only good, confused American boys in uniform trying to muddle through a scary situation as best they can. It is sad that a film so devoid of texture can earn critical plaudits. It is sadder that so few Americans can watch such a picture without losing their lunch. Not only is the history it seeks to revise ridiculously recent, one can only shudder in horror at the thought of what Iraqis and other Middle Easterners will think when pirated copies start showing up at local bazaars. "The truth is 'The Hurt Locker' is very political," wrote Michael Moore. "It says the war is stupid and senseless and insane. It makes us consider why we have an army where people actually volunteer to do this." That's true. But the politics are terrible. And that's the wrong question. We need to stop wallowing in self-indulgent, sentimental pap about how bad war is for the U.S. military forces that fight them. After all, the U.S. has started every war it has fought since 1945. What we should be considering is what our forces do to others in the course of invading and destroying their countries. _______ Ted Rall Online: www.rall.com COMING OCTOBER '09: New graphic novel "The Year of Loving Dangerously" About author Ted Rall is the author of the new book "Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central Asia the New Middle East?," an in-depth prose and graphic novel analysis of America's next big foreign policy challenge. http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/27298/ted_rall/triumph_of_the_swill_the_hurt_locker_supports_the_troops_and_the_lies This article is nothing but 100% crap. This author is just pissed off that a Pro War,Pro military,anti Liberal movie such as the Hurt locker is racking up awards everywhere it goes.Meanwhile your Left winging,anti liberal BS movies like Stop loss,lions for lambs,and other anti military junk is so bad hardly anyone notices. "Pro-war"...that says it all...yeah keep supporting the military industrial complex...redrum redum redrum...for profit and fun! A Chickenhawk's delight... V for Vendetta best explains what we were going through under the Dippic's reign....great movie. |
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The Motion Picture Academy's choice of "The Hurt Locker" as best film of 2009 is a sad commentary on the movie business as well as America's unwillingness to face the ugly truth about itself nearly a decade after 9/11. "The Hurt Locker" is about a U.S. Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) unit operating in U.S.-occupied Iraq in 2004, one year after the invasion. They get called in to disarm improvised explosive devices (IEDs) of all shapes and sizes: homemade chemical explosives, old bombs looted from Iraqi military arsenals, even roadside bombs planted inside bodies. The EOD unit in "The Hurt Locker" also comes under fire from Iraqi resistance fighters. The setting is inherently political, yet director Kathryn Bigelow studiously insists that her movie isn't. "Did you want to make sure that the film didn't divulge into choosing a political stance?" an interviewer asked her. "I think that was important," she replied. "There is that saying, 'There is no politics in the trenches,' and I think it was important to look at the heroism of these men." Soldiers exhibit extraordinary courage in every war, on every side. Sam Peckinpah's searing 1977 film "Cross of Iron" successfully makes the case for heroic behavior--bravery, anyway--on the part of Nazi forces participating in the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1943. So there's nothing wrong with Bigelow's basic assumption. It should be possible for a moviemaker to "look at the heroism of these men" despite the fact that the cause for they're fighting is evil. The trouble with "The Hurt Locker" is that it, like too many other American war films, whitewashes history. In this film neither the EOD unit at the center of the film or soldiers belonging to other units ever make a mistake that kills or seriously injures an Iraqi civilian. You keep waiting for it to happen, and you'd almost be OK with that one stray shot. Like the camera that put the audience behind the killer's mask in "Halloween," Bigelow has created a claustrophobic, soldier's-eye view ominous with paranoia, all too justifiable. It's hot and dusty. Everyone's dog-tired. You can almost taste the stress. Her camera jumps from one potential threat to another: is that garbage on the side of the road just litter? Why is that guy on the roof of the building across the street staring so intently? Even the perfect set-up for the accidental killing of an Iraqi civilian--while defusing a roadside bomb, an observer goes for his cellphone--turns out to be justified. The Iraqi was an insurgent, using the phone to detonate the charge. And this is where a supposedly apolitical film turns into a nasty bit of pro-U.S. propaganda. As the film critic Andrew Breitbart writes, "The Hurt Locker" stripped its Iraqi characters of their humanity "and turned [them] into story-props: villains, victims, foul-mouthed hustlers, or strange alien beings who keep an awkward distance and mourn the dead by yelling savagely at the sky." For the purpose of this small film about a group of guys, one of whom is (laughably, as though such a character would be tolerated in an elite bomb squad unit) a go-it-alone cowboy who makes his comrades understandably nervous, it doesn't matter that they/the U.S. shouldn't be in Iraq in the first place. That can be for another film. (Indeed, it already was. David O. Russell's brilliant "Three Kings," a 1999 effort set in the 1991 Gulf War, presages the 2003 invasion and serves as its ultimate cinematic rebuke.) Yet creative liberties have limits. One is historical truth. Unless you're making a live-action cartoon like "Inglorious Basterds," you can't make things up wholesale. But "The Hurt Locker" does. It creates an alternate universe to the one real Iraqis lived under in 2004, in which U.S. troops took as much care not to hurt civilians as AIG took with our taxdollars. In the real world of U.S.-occupied Iraq in 2004, American soldiers were blowing away anyone who failed to slow down at (often unmarked) highway checkpoints. They were raping, robbing and murdering civilians for the fun of it. Countless soldiers recounted driving through towns and villages, randomly shooting at houses and people standing on the street. According to Iraq Body Count's extremely conservative estimate, between 8,000 and 10,000 Iraqis had been killed by April 2004. The truth was probably fiftyfold. Marine Sergeant Jimmy Massey, 26, testified in December 2004 that men under his command killed "thirty-plus" civilians within 48 hours while manning a checkpoint in Baghdad. "I do know that we killed innocent civilians," Sgt. Massey said, stating that his unit fired between 200 and 500 rounds into four separate cars. Each had failed to respond to warning shots and hand signals. In September 2004 the Knight-Ridder News Service reported that more Iraqi civilians had been killed by U.S. forces at checkpoints than by insurgents. "At the Baghdad morgue, Dr. Quasis Hassan Salem said he saw a family of eight brought in: three women, three men and two children. They were sleeping on their roof last month because it was hot inside. A military helicopter shot at them and killed them: 'I don't know why,'" said the wire service. The reason for the bloodshed was simple: U.S. troops had been trained to shoot first, ask questions later. They didn't care about the civilians they were supposedly there to liberate. "My platoon had to learn [checkpoint techniques] on the fly," wrote Marine Captain Nathaniel Fick in The New York Times in March 2005. "For example, once while driving through a town, we cut down a traffic sign--a bright, red octagon with the word 'stop' written in Arabic--and used it at checkpoints. Who knows how many lives this simple act of theft may have saved?" We don't see any of this in "The Hurt Locker," only good, confused American boys in uniform trying to muddle through a scary situation as best they can. It is sad that a film so devoid of texture can earn critical plaudits. It is sadder that so few Americans can watch such a picture without losing their lunch. Not only is the history it seeks to revise ridiculously recent, one can only shudder in horror at the thought of what Iraqis and other Middle Easterners will think when pirated copies start showing up at local bazaars. "The truth is 'The Hurt Locker' is very political," wrote Michael Moore. "It says the war is stupid and senseless and insane. It makes us consider why we have an army where people actually volunteer to do this." That's true. But the politics are terrible. And that's the wrong question. We need to stop wallowing in self-indulgent, sentimental pap about how bad war is for the U.S. military forces that fight them. After all, the U.S. has started every war it has fought since 1945. What we should be considering is what our forces do to others in the course of invading and destroying their countries. _______ Ted Rall Online: www.rall.com COMING OCTOBER '09: New graphic novel "The Year of Loving Dangerously" About author Ted Rall is the author of the new book "Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central Asia the New Middle East?," an in-depth prose and graphic novel analysis of America's next big foreign policy challenge. http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/27298/ted_rall/triumph_of_the_swill_the_hurt_locker_supports_the_troops_and_the_lies This article is nothing but 100% crap. This author is just pissed off that a Pro War,Pro military,anti Liberal movie such as the Hurt locker is racking up awards everywhere it goes.Meanwhile your Left winging,anti liberal BS movies like Stop loss,lions for lambs,and other anti military junk is so bad hardly anyone notices. The academy honors film by different technical and professional standards than movie goers do. I think an award called peoples choice bases their awards on popularity. there is no accounting for public taste,(brittany spears actually sold more than christina aguillera,,,remember?) sometimes. For example, American Idol IS a popularity contest, but look how many winners actually went on to become successful. I dont care for war movies, but I think that just because they center around war doesnt mean they should be held to any different standards than other movies are. My brother , when he was in the military, actually DID diffuse underwarter explosives and when I ask him about the movie he said it was entertaining,,which is the point of entertainment. |
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I saw the movie and was suprised it won Best Picture.
The most shocking scene of the movie was when he returns home from the war and is in the kitchen cooking with his wife. She is cleaning/soaking mushrooms in the sink. You should NEVER soak mushrooms!! |
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not surprised right wingers rave about the most boring movie i'd ever seen. it was typical zionazi propaganda just like Legion
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