What did y'all think of The Hurt Locker?

[HotBluePlates]

So I just saw this movie today, and had plenty of my own thoughts about it since I'm in Iraq right now. I just wondered what anyone here thought of it, and how true-to-life you might think it is.

Below is a copy of a PM I sent to Tubenit:

Hey [Tubenit]!
So guess what? I just saw the Hurt Locker... And now I know why there was such an uproar in Stars & Stripes over here (our daily newspaper).

The funny thing was that it seemed like most all the little details were wrong in the movie. And the big stuff? Mostly wrong, too! 

The best way to describe it is to say it accurately depicts Iraq as much as The Quick and The Dead is a historical piece on the old west, or the Lethal Weapon series is a documentary on police work.

Good story, set it a place and time that was bound to capture audience interest in the US. But it really is pure fiction. Yes, there are IEDs over here, as well as VBIEDs (vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices) and suicide bombs (both with and without the "bomber's" cooperation). The setting also looks like the Iraq I'm familiar with.

But really, I could spend a month of Sundays pointing out all the errors.

I just hope that folks who see it don't think they really understand Iraq, any more than those that watch Platoon think they understand Vietnam.

[HotBluePlates]

[rafe]

  I support you guys ....Not Hollywood  Havent seen it

[FYL]

I just wondered what anyone here thought of it, and how true-to-life you might think it is.

Just another fiction. Nice story, well-filmed, etc. But true-to-anything it ain't.

[tubenit]

I PM'd HBP back and stated I presumed it was hollywoodized to not be realistic when it came to the bomb and technician stuff.

What was un-nerving to me was the aspect of the film of being in a country where you're surrounded by individuals and not knowing who was "for you" and who wanted to kill you.

I lived in another country as a foreigner for two years back when the US was respected worldwide ............ and it still was unsettling at times to be surrounded by nationals and unable to speak or understand the language and what they were saying. I have even felt a little uncomfortable in France and in Mexico at times visiting.

With respect, Tubenit

[tubesornothing]

Its easy to hate the big guy. 

What does "hurt locker" mean anyways.  Good movie, other than a silly plot.  The rest of it made up for it though.

[simonallaway]

Good movie, other than a silly plot.  The rest of it made up for it though.

I loved the scene out in the desert where they happened upon a team of mercenaries but got caught off guard by a sniper. The tension was incredible!

[EL34]

Haven't seen it, have to put this on my Netflix list.

I have even felt a little uncomfortable in France and in Mexico at times

France yes - Isn't that where the coneheads came from?
Good enough of a reason for me right there.


Mexico. Can't turn on the Tv these days without a Mexican drug cartel story being on one or more channels.
Pretty scary place these days in places.

[HotBluePlates]

Its easy to hate the big guy. 

What does "hurt locker" mean anyways.

Well, "hurt locker" is a bit of military slang. If you're in an awful situation, or about to really catch hell over something you did, you might either be "in a hurt locker" or about to be in it. Some of our slang makes sense when you're familiar with the background vocabulary, but is really meaningless without that background.

What did you mean by easy to hate the big guy?

My objections to nit-picky stuff in the movie are numerous.

I'm a sergeant, and the wrong uniforms drove me to distraction, since correcting uniform deficiencies seems to be the #1 or #2 thing we do as an on-the-spot correction. Dudes with their sleeves rolled up (it doesn't matter if it's 130 degrees here, absolutely no member of the United States Army will roll up the sleeves of their uniform under any condition), nametape/US Army tape on the wrong side of the uniform, wrong kevlar (helmet cover), wrong way to wear and mark a cateye (the elastic band that goes around the kevlar), wrong type of flag on the uniform, flag worn on the wrong sleeve or on both sleeves, dudes wearing their helmet unfastened (as we say, "pulling a John Wayne"; helmet is either on your head fastened or off your head, no other options), and guys with pin-on badges on their uniform (no pin-on badge is authorized to worn on the uniform at any time inside a designated combat zone).

And that was just my first 10 minutes into the movie. We won't get into the big infractions regarding soldiers drinking alcohol (it's banned over here by General Order #1; you can't get it into the country, much less legally possess or consume it), EOD doing their job completely wrong (I have direct contact with several Explosive Ordnance Disposal teams here; it's an indirect part of my job), the colonel being a complete !@#$%^ as well as a war-criminal, and the fact that I kept wondering where was the rest of the characters' company?

But really, bottom-line, there are a couple truths to the movie. The bad-guys stopped wearing uniforms once they realized that it made it easier for us to shoot them, and you can never let your guard down. Everything except those 2 points just reads 100% wrong to a guy that's actually over here.

[simonallaway]

My objections to nit-picky stuff in the movie are numerous.

That's disappointing. Before I watched it I got the impression the movie had a good pedigree because the story that inspired it had come from a journalist that spent a lot of time with troops on the ground. I suppose I was hoping for something "authentic".

Reading this : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurt_Locker#Response_among_veterans

..along with your post tells me otherwise.

Ah well...the explosions were good 

[FYL]

France yes - Isn't that where the coneheads came from?

That's what Beldar said.

[Shrapnel]

My objections to nit-picky stuff in the movie are numerous.

That's disappointing. Before I watched it I got the impression the movie had a good pedigree because the story that inspired it had come from a journalist that spent a lot of time with troops on the ground. I suppose I was hoping for something "authentic".

Reading this : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurt_Locker#Response_among_veterans

..along with your post tells me otherwise.

Ah well...the explosions were good 

Good pedigree means NOTHING when "Holly would" gets a hold of it. I take little coming out of Hollywood as fact, and even documentaries out of Hollywood are suspect... Although, a good Hollywood picture could go a long way to discredit a conspiracy theory or two that in real life has a reality in fact. Artistic License allows them to butcher any fact, discredit any fact, and whatever else may motivate them in the name of "story" or "action." Hollywood is about as factual as "objective journalism" is practiced and encouraged by the media cartels. (i.e. take a story and focus on all the failures, and in some cases manufacture a tearjerker to do so, while ignoring every objective that has came out positive.)


To our Soldiers: Keep up the good work over there, and don't let the garbage coming out of our media sources damage your morale or what you know is really the truth.

[HotBluePlates]

I remebered the Best Director award for this movie, but forgot about Best Picture. I don't know of The Green Zone was around at the same time as The Hurt Locker, but I thought it was a very much better movie and without all the distracting errors. The story is also more interesting to me, even though it is a work of fiction and not fact.

To our Soldiers: Keep up the good work over there, and don't let the garbage coming out of our media sources damage your morale or what you know is really the truth.

Oh, it doesn't bother morale at all. 

It kind of reminds me of Burt Lancaster as The Birdman of Alcatraz, which painted the convict as being on some sort of moral high-ground fighting against an unfair warden. Of course, the real guy was not so handsome, likeable or with such seemingly good motives...

Movies like this usually have a military advisor on hand to make sure they get the little details right so they aren't a distraction. One thing that was comical to me was when the main characters rode past some parked vehicles, and one of them comments about the "tanks" they just passed. I rewound the movie, and I *think* I saw a couple of Strykers and a Bradley. One is a tracked infantry fighting vehicle (call it an armored personnel carrier), while the other is a whelled IFV. There wasn't a tank to be seen.

The big thing is probably that the act of disarming a bomb is more suspenseful and maybe more interesting than real-life. I won't write about EOD methods on the internet, but they do things in a very much safer manner than anything shown in the movie. And with a lot less left to chance.

Funny thing about those "tanks"... I have seen the result of an IED emplacer tangling with a Bradley and its 20mm main gun. Let's just say it was a very bad day for the bad guys...

[tubesornothing]

What did you mean by easy to hate the big guy?

Just a reponse to tubenits comment.  It easy for smaller countries who are envous of the states to hate the US...

... to a guy that's actually over here.

Are you over there right now?  Ahhh, that might explain your hiatus a while back.

[HotBluePlates]

Just a reponse to tubenits comment.  It easy for smaller countries who are envous of the states to hate the US...

Oh... Duh!

Are you over there right now?  Ahhh, that might explain your hiatus a while back.

Yep. I'm quite close to where the Al-Qaeda in Iraq leaders were killed a few weeks ago.

It's been interesting, though my job does not take me off the base. When I returned here off of R&R, I flew back to base on the last leg of the trip on a Blackhawk. I diod finally see some areas of Iraq that are irrigated. But man, I miss greenery. It's pretty much barren, rocky desert here.

But nothing like Kuwait. That place is what Americans think of when they think of the desert. Just sand as far as the eye can see in every direction. And I arrived here last summer, so Kuwait was a beautiful 118F, which is fairly mild for them... 

[tubesornothing]

Saw the green zone last night.  Good show.  So do you guys have a movie night over there and throw popcorn at these kinda shows when they say something stupid?

[HotBluePlates]

Maybe there's a movie night, but I've never had the time to go do any of the extra things that are done to "improve morale". 

Unfortunately, when I did get days off, I worked 12+ hrs a day, and in order to move to an 8 hour shift, we had to sacrifice days off. But there are dvd's available, although they're bootleg copies of the movies, often poor quality. Until a month or 2 ago, I didn't have a computer/laptop, so I wasn't even doing that. Just reading a lot of good books PRR sent out here.