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Journal of Feminist Family Therapy Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/wfft20
Hurt Locker Barbara Flom
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University of Wisconsin-Stout , Menomonie, Wisconsin Published online: 20 Nov 2010.
To cite this article: Barbara Flom (2010) Hurt Locker, Journal of Feminist Family Therapy, 22:4, 324-325, DOI: 10.1080/08952833.2010.526070 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08952833.2010.526070
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Movie Reviews
miss the story behind the movie. Layers and layers of humanity and feminist controversies lie covertly behind the screen. Coreen Haym The University of Nevada, Las Vegas Las Vegas, Nevada
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Hurt Locker, directed by Kathryn Bigelow, and written by Mark Boal. Produced by Kathryn Bigelow, Mark Boal, Nicolas Chartier, and Greg Shapiro. Universal City, CA: Summit Entertainment, 2008. “War is a drug.” That thesis opens The Hurt Locker, courses through two hours detailing daily life for an Army bomb squad in Iraq, and terminates the movie’s final frame. Tension flows throughout the movie, rarely ebbing for any relief, recapping the war it depicts. The heart of The Hurt Locker is Sergeant Sanborn’s story. Charged with covering his squad leader’s frequent forays to defuse potentially deadly Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), the experienced Sanborn has just seen one beloved team leader perish. As the movie opens, he must educate that leader’s replacement, James—the squad’s new boss—in their group’s protocols and procedures. The education of James includes lessons in communication under fire (a face-punch from Sanborn emphasizes its importance) and in racial relations (“I know redneck trailer trash when I see it,” spits Sanborn, and his white team leader confirms the assessment). James revels in his “Wild Man” persona, drawn headlong and often unprotected into areas with suspected IEDs. Although his under-bed collection of bomb detonators unnerves Sanborn and Eldridge, a third member of the team, James’ stellar determination and skill eventually win their respect. The movie progresses through a countdown of days left in the squad’s tour of duty, ending not, as anticipated, with the tour’s conclusion but with the beginning of James’ subsequent tour. Adrift during a brief recess at home, he has fled the quotidian life of grocery shopping and baby care to re-up for the blood-and-adrenalin-soaked world of his addiction: war. A subtext of mental health issues permeates the movie. For example, Eldridge is deeply affected by the loss of his first squad leader, and he doesn’t hesitate to voice his despondence. As a result, the company psychologist shadows him, lobbing casual, irritating questions (“Sleeping OK? Getting along with your fellow solders?”). “Doc” reprises the ineffectual role of the chaplain in the 1970s classic M∗ A∗ S∗ H : a do-gooder who gets in the way. Eldridge can barely stifle his fury and challenges Doc to experience life on the front lines. Doc takes up Eldridge’s challenge, only to bumble through an attempt to befriend a group of Iraqis, with lethal results. Substance abuse, marital difficulties, and interpersonal violence also occur for these soldiers,
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Movie Reviews
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but the here-and-now daily mission drives all these issues to the margins of their lives. The three central characters bring personal depth and interpersonal conflict to the story’s recurring scenes of tension. Sanborn wonders what it would take for him, an African American, to become a leader like the ones he has trained—all white. Eldridge’s blond, wide-eyed Midwestern naiveté is challenged severely by the need to clean blood off of bullets and, eventually, to kill a human being himself. James is drawn to the children he sees in Iraq, perhaps thinking of his own infant son at home, and makes it a personal, perilous mission to seek out one young soccer player he fears dead. The Iraqi people, on the other hand, are portrayed superficially. They appear almost as cardboard props surrounding each detonation scene, acting predictably enigmatic and untrustworthy. “They all look alike,” says Sanborn on discovering the mutilated body of a child. The Hurt Locker is all about U.S. troops and their experience in Iraq; it portrays no human connection between these men and the people they are ostensibly protecting. Much has been made of the fact that The Hurt Locker, a war movie about men, was produced and directed by a woman, Kathryn Bigelow. Some reviewers have noted particular sensitivity to the thoughts and lives of these warriors; perhaps they are correct. The movie maintains a number of warmovie clichés as well, however: a faceless enemy, a minimizing of the mental health issues that dominate the lives of so many soldiers, and a focus on action to induce jolt after jolt of adrenalin in viewers. “War is a drug.” The success of The Hurt Locker may, in fact, be most attributable to our own societal addiction to it. Barbara Flom University of Wisconsin-Stout Menomonie, Wisconsin Inglourious Basterds, directed and written by Quentin Tarantino. Produced by Lawrence Bender. Hollywood, CA: The Weinstein Company & Universal Pictures, 2009. Inglourious Basterds, first shown at the Cannes Film Festival, exudes uninhibited action, irony and violence in a genre-blending and thoroughly captivating film. The movie presents many contradictions and takes viewers on an expedition through fictional history. Misogyny and feminism, racism and acceptance, brutality and optimism, and history and fiction confront one another throughout the film in streams of self-conscious dialogue.
