The Project

From across the Atlantic, Kelsey Bell, a US army soldier in training, gives us her opinion on The Hurt Locker, and tells us of her experiences.

When I went to see The Hurt Locker last night, I didn’t know it had received a ten-minute standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival. I didn’t know it had won six major film awards and was nominated for four others. I thought it was going to be just another movie about the mess we’ve made in Iraq - but i was wrong. without a doubt, this is probably the best film that I’ve seen in a long time.

The film centres around three soldiers, who are part of an EOD (explosive ordinance disposal) unit in Baghdad. EOD has become an increasingly popular specialty, due to IEDs. Throughout the film, I found myself literally inching to the edge of my seat, or clutching my bottle of diet coke a bit tighter during some of the we’re-about-to-die scenes. the cinematography made the suspenseful element of the film absolutely spectacular. The technicalities were really well done and, for the most part, everything was believable.

However, there were several things that took a departure from verisimilitude. To name a few: a Colonel went out into the streets with no bodyguard; the main characters just happened to ‘bump into’ a group of British Special Forces in the desert; they later pursued a ‘gut feeling’ in an attempt to hunt down a bomber in the middle of the night... alone. Also, the central protagonist sneaked off base (alone, again, and in the middle of the night) to find a 12 year-old boy. In the Army, the Battle Buddy system (don’t go ANYWHERE alone) is drilled into your head from day one, so some of this stuff was a little too Hollywood for my liking.

Those factors aside, it’s easy to adore the film, if you consider it symbolic, and not literal. It all starts when Bravo company has about 40 days left in Iraq. We meet our EOD team, and are soon introduced to Sergeant Will James - a Ranger with perpetually rolled sleeves and a bad-ass attitude. This was more a character study than a film about plot. Beyond our three-man team, we never really meet other soldiers (a departure from most war films). Actually, there was very little fraternity amongst the characters at all (again, a departure from the ‘band of brothers’ mentality found in Saving Private Ryan or Black Hawk Down. Instead, this film weaves together six or seven distinct situations and highlights how the characters react differently in each one.

COL Reed: What’s the best way to go about disarming one of these things?

SGT William James: The way you don’t die, sir.

Firstly, Sergeant Sanborn is a thoughtful man who likes to do things as a team, by the books. He knows his place and duty and trusts others in the Army to act professionally. In the first scene, he painstakingly examines a bomb from 100m away using a special robot: he is meticulous and careful. Secondly, Specialist Eldridge is the baby of the group - confused, naive, but a good boy who tries desperately to please. He’s young and insecure, constantly asking questions because he’s worried that a misjudgement will lead to the death of an innocent civilian or another soldier. Finally, Sergeant James is the most experienced man in the trio, and, despite his arrogance and reckless attitude, manages to execute his missions perfectly. In contrast to Sanborn, he has no qualms about walking right up to a bomb and disarming it without protective gear ("if I’m going to die, I want to be comfortable!"). Unfortunately, his adrenaline fix seems to be his only priority, regardless of safety. Beneath his renegade act, however, he struggles with his choice of profession and the strain it has put on his family, most notably, on his relationship with his girlfriend and young son.

When we step back and see these characters as example archetypes of the American soldier, it’s easy to understand how we (as a collective body) have become so confused about our presence in the Middle East since the War on Terror began. We’ve got people who would prefer a delicate and thoughtful diplomatic approach; others aren’t quite sure what we should do, but support the decisions of our leaders with a smile and a wave of the flag; others yet have the remarkable ability to see through the transparencies of agitprop and struggle on a moral or personal level with the role they play. Nevertheless, this doesn’t keep them from doing what they were trained to do.

This film isn’t terribly cerebral, but - stylistically speaking - it was more No Country for Old Men and less GI Joe. If you like suspense, action, and want to see a war film that "purports to show the experience of the soldiers" (Mark Boal, screenwriter), then I wholeheartedly suggest you see this film at the cinema or as soon as it comes out on DVD.