Review: The Hurt Locker

I have a confession to make to you, the fine readers of this blog: I've led you all astray. Let me tell you how. In my review-of-2009 posting, I wrote that Avatar was the best movie of the year. The visual effects, the action, the weird dragon things; it all seemed so amazing. However, I stand greatly corrected. Avatar is not the best movie of 2009; The Hurt Locker is the best movie of 2009. Now before Avatar fans start showing up at my door with pitchforks and torches (and probably in blue body paint), let me explain.

The Hurt Locker is probably one of the most tense and suspenseful movies I've ever watched. The movie follows an army company in Iraq whose duty it is to disarm explosive devices. It sounds like a simple enough premise, but as you watch the process that goes into the disarmament of these explosives, you become more and more nervous. It's not so much because bad things are necessarily happening (a bomb exploding), but it's because you know that the potential of something terrible happening is ridiculously high (waiting for a bomb to possibly explode).

The viewer also gets a look into the minds of these men. There are no cheesy speeches or over-the-top touching moments. It's just soldiers being honest about the dangers of what they do and the reality of possibly dying at any moment on any given day. It's also not Brad Pitt or Johnny Depp who's leading this movie. It's three relative unknown actors, all average looking guys you would walk past in the supermarket and not think about twice. In other words, they could be your average soldier fighting in Iraq who you never think about twice. There are no heroes in this movie. There are no eye-popping action sequences. Just the human psyche at its best on full display and the incredible power of not knowing how any situation will turn out.

There's no political message in this movie (unlike Avatar), there's fantastic character development (unlike Avatar), and the plot is never certain until the final credits roll (unlike Avatar). This is not to say that Avatar was a bad movie because it was an absolutely incredible feat of movie-making and was wildly entertaining. But after seeing something like The Hurt Locker, I'm much more blown away by its ability to keep you on the edge of your seat through smart dialogue, tension-filled scenes, strong acting, and unpredictability, rather than just blowing stuff up like crazy in Avatar.

Oh yeah, the budget for Avatar: $237 million. The budget for The Hurt Locker: $11 million. It's like Biggie said, "Mo' money, mo' problems."

As people start to put these two movies in the Oscar discussion, it will be intriguing to see where Hollywood stands. Interestingly, and you may have heard this already, Kathryn Bigelow, the director of The Hurt Locker, is the ex-wife of James Cameron. If she beats her ex in either the Best Director or Best Picture category, chalk one up for Miss Independent.

And speaking of the Oscars, I had always been under the impression that I never really watched the movies that were typically up for best movie honors at those award shows. This might have something to do with my movie tastes being a little bit, shall we say, different (i.e. one of my favorite movies ever is Mission: Impossible III). But after doing some research, it turns out that I actually watch a lot of the so-called best movies. And chances are, my friends, that you have too. These are the movies selected Best Movie of the Year at the Academy Awards in the last ten years:

1999: American Beauty

2000: Gladiator

2001: A Beautiful Mind

2002: Chicago

2003: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

2004: Million Dollar Baby

2005: Crash
(This movie, by the way, is in my top-10 most overrated movies of all-time. It basically taught us that racism is still alive in America. We needed a movie to tell us that? Please. The real reason it won was because old white people thought that by selecting Crash, it would make them appear progressive and they could give themselves a pat on the back. Watch it again. It's extremely mediocre. Also, let's not forget that Crash had Ludacris in it; the same guy who rapped about having hos in different area codes.)

2006: The Departed

2007: No Country for Old Men

2008: Slumdog Millionaire

I've seen eight of them. The two I haven't seen are Chicago (probably won't ever watch it) and No Country for Old Men (in the Netflix queue).

So what does this mean exactly? The initial reaction is that my movie tastes have become more mature with time. I highly doubt this, though, because I consider Will Ferrell to be an American icon. It's also my opinion that one of the best movies of 2009 was The Hangover.


Let's just say that my movie sense is... developing. Yeah, developing. That's it. That sounds good. Let's go with that. Developing.

But we're getting off track. So here's what I want you to do: put down your torch and pitchfork, go watch The Hurt Locker, compare it to Avatar, and come back and tell me how right I am. Thanks.