There goes me thinking “The Hurt Locker,” Kathryn Bigelow’s latest film, would be just another Iraq-themed film. According to The Hollywood Reporter, “This movie is not about the Iraq war. It’s an action-adventure movie that happens to be set in Iraq,” said by the film’s producer Nic Chartier. But then again, almost every war-themed film showing at this year’s Toronto Film Festival is being billed as the same sort of thing – that being not as strongly focused on war itself as opposed to the softer, more human stories that they know audiences would rather see. Whether or not this is just an attempt to make sure these films don’t fall victim to the curse that fell upon the war-themed films of ’07 remains to be seen. [THR via Living in Cinema]
Venice ’08: In Competition
“The Hurt Locker” by Kathryn Bigelow
Derek Elley, “War may be hell, but watching war movies can also be hell, especially when they don’t get to the point. Often gripping at a straight thriller level, but increasingly weakened by its fuzzy (and hardly original) psychology, Kathryn Bigelow’s “The Hurt Locker,” centered on an elite U.S. bomb squad in Baghdad, doesn’t bring anything new to the table of grunts-in-the-firing-line movies.”
Fionnuala Halligan, “The Hurt Locker probably isn’t the “great” Iraq film which will finally move audiences into theatres but it does play out like fragments of one…Bigelow crafts here a barrage of individual set pieces of great, often heart-stopping tension, but they don’t quite add up as a whole and, towards the end, almost strain against the central impetuous of the film. She captures very well, though, the feel at street level for these comrades-in-arms (Jordan subbed for Iraq) and it is possible this could play well to veterans and their families, kick-starting word-of-mouth.”
Nick Vivarelli, “The Iraq war dominated the day at the Venice Film Festival, where the world preem of Kathryn Bigelow’s high-adrenaline bomb-squad actioner “The Hurt Locker” gave the Lido a jolt and emerged as the Iraq pic that may break through to American auds.”
Shane Danielsen gives it 2 out of 5 stars, “The Hurt Locker is her [Kathryn Bigelow] war movie, and dutifully deploys every stylistic hallmark of the form: the jittery handheld camerawork, with its abrupt, recallibrating zooms and snap-pans; the bleached film stock – even the use of Courier font to signal shifts of locations and times. Yet for all this eager verisimilitude, the film never feels like anything but old-fashioned…Like the men it depicts, The Hurt Locker never rises above its own limitations.”
Cat Bauer, “My only complaint is that there was too little of Ralph Fiennes and David Morse, two of my favorite actors.”
Richard Corliss gives it a flat out rave calling it a “A Near-Perfect War Film” in his review headline, “The merging of actor and character is one of the big things to love about this movie. The other is that its tone, of steely calm, takes its cue from the character it so acutely observes…Later I may think of a better depiction of the helplessness and heroism attending the U.S. presence in the war on terrorism, but for now I’ll say this one’s the tops.”
Peter Howell, “Just when you think the battle of Iraq war dramas has been fought and lost, along comes one that demands to be seen – if you can handle the raging adrenaline…If you can sit through The Hurt Locker without your heart nearly pounding through your chest, you must be made of granite.”