Showing posts with label The Hurt Locker. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Hurt Locker. Show all posts

Sunday, June 28, 2009

"The Hurt Locker": Some Reviews

I did a post a few days ago on the release of "The Hurt Locker", with a couple of trailers, here are a few reviews from those limited openings:

It’s a man’s world
And in ‘Hurt Locker,’ director Kathryn Bigelow tells another muscular story by focusing on members of an elite Army bomb squad

Director Kathryn Bigelow is about to leave, but there’s one more question. An obvious one, to be sure. By this point in the interview it seems, well, silly - condescending even - to ask it. Bigelow’s been so forthright, so outgoing and inquisitive in her own right, that she seems to have answered it already:

No, Kathryn Bigelow, 57, didn’t get where she is because she’s a woman or in spite of being a woman. She got here by sheer force of all 5 feet 11 inches of her, and that’s not in heels, which she wears to make for an even more impressive presence...........


Could 'The Hurt Locker' make Oscars' new top 10?

"The Hurt Locker" opened today to some of the strongest reviews for a movie this year. The Iraq war drama about a bomb squad earned a jaw-dropping 91 among the reviews surveyed by Metacritic, and the aggregate score of top critics at Rotten Tomatoes came in at a still-impressive 89...........



Review: Hurt Locker a Tough, Terrific Combat Flick

A Review in a Hurry: In the latest Iraq War movie...Wait, don't leave! This one's actually good, we promise! Eschewing political commentary for nerve-rattling suspense, director Kathryn Bigelow (Point Break, Near Dark), palpably conveys the unrelenting tension of life in a never-ending war zone.

The Bigger Picture: After an attempted bomb defusing goes horribly wrong, the Iraq-based Bravo company is assigned a new Staff Sergeant, William James (Jeremy Renner). But unlike his predecessor, James is a cocksure adrenaline junkie who frequently ignores protocol, and makes things difficult on his teammates, the aggressive Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and nervous Eldridge (Brian Geraghty)........


Box Office: “Hurt Locker” Huge

Kathryn Bigelow’s “The Hurt Locker” bowed in four theaters this weekend and according to estimates, it took in a huge $144,000 gross. That makes for a $36,000 average for the Summit Entertainment release, topping the opening of recent films like “Whatever Works” and “Away We Go” to become the second biggest limited debut of 2009, behind only “Sunshine Cleaning.” This is particularly impressive considering that, unlike those three examples, “Locker” is not a comedy and does not feature any well-known stars..............

Friday, June 26, 2009

"The Hurt Locker"

Soldiers on a Live Wire Between Peril and Protocol

If “The Hurt Locker” is not the best action movie of the summer, I’ll blow up my car. The movie is a viscerally exciting, adrenaline-soaked tour de force of suspense and surprise, full of explosions and hectic scenes of combat, but it blows a hole in the condescending assumption that such effects are just empty spectacle or mindless noise........


Trailer 1


Trailer 2


Trailer 3


Not necessarily about the causes and consequences of the Iraq war, mind you. The filmmakers’ insistence on zooming in on and staying close to the moment-to-moment experiences of soldiers in the field is admirable in its way but a little evasive as well. “The Hurt Locker,” which takes place in 2004 (it was filmed mostly in Jordan), depicts men who risk their lives every day on the streets of Baghdad and in the desert beyond, and who are too stressed out, too busy, too preoccupied with the details of survival to reflect on larger questions about what they are doing there.........


Opens on Friday, 6.26.09, in New York and Los Angeles.

Official website for THE HURT LOCKER, winner of the 2008 Venice Film Festival SIGNIS Grand Prize.

NPR Fresh Air 'Hurt Locker' Creators On Explosive New Thriller

Fresh Air from WHYY, June 24, 2009 · Screenwriter Mark Boal and director Kathryn Bigelow join Fresh Air to discuss their collaboration on The Hurt Locker, a combat movie about an Army bomb squad that roams Iraq in search of explosives to diffuse........{More at above link}

Listen to discussion on NPR Player


From the Movie Reality of War to the Reality of War:

Hospital sees more GIs from Afghan frontline
‘We’ve seen a lot ... and I hope we can handle it,’ says one staffer



BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan - The urgent call came in: Roadside bombs had ripped through two Humvees and wounded eight or nine U.S. soldiers.

Medevac helicopters immediately hit the air to ferry the soldiers to the main U.S. military hospital. But when they arrived, they carried only five patients.

The other four were dead..........