The Hurt Locker: Movie Analysis

Veterans of the war in Iraq are frustrated with the film The Hurt Locker in the way that it inaccurately portrays the process of a mission involving the disarming of roadside bombs. In movies, the ideas and concepts of things that we have not yet experienced in our own lives subconsciously instills itself in our minds and everyday thoughts. For example, when the mind thinks of any crime, like murder, a bank robbery, or being in jail, if you have not experienced these things first-hand, then there is no real way of knowing exactly what those things are like. But we think that movies give us all of the information that we need to know. War is the best example of this. By watching war films, the average civilian thinks that they have a general

grasp of what war is actually like. War is like hitting your first home run, you can’t really describe the feeling until you experience it yourself. This is what upsets the veterans. Throughout the book Redeployment, there is a constant theme of frustration from the characters once returned home, they feel different than everyone that has not experienced war as they have and that cannot interact normal civilians. The fact that the exact feeling of the horror of war is not captured in The Hurt Locker and that is falsely offering a sense of empathy and understanding towards its viewers is what categorizes the film as unrealistic.
The film The Hurt Locker takes place during the Iraq war. The main focus of the movie is the insane job of defusing IEDs or “roadside bombs”. These bombs are extremely difficult to locate and find, and can detonate at any time. They are basically landmines. The job of the main character, Sgt. James, is to find and properly disarm and defuse these bombs so they do not go off. The main purpose of the bombs are to blow up humvees or tanks, as they are strategically places along the roads of Iraq. They are also a scare tactic and a territorial barrier; they can be placed anywhere at anytime and the U.S. army always has to be alert of them. In the movie, the first Sgt. dies from the explosion of an IED. Then comes Sgt. James. He replaces Sgt. Thompson, the one who died, and brings new style to the platoon. A new style that scares all of his comrades because of his recklessness. There is one scene where the Sgt. either doesn’t reply to his headset to communicate with comrades, and one where he actually removes it so he cannot communicate. He thought the people asking him questions were a hassle, and did not want to deal with them. He was inconsiderate and reckless by doing this, because by not relaying his status to his comrades, he puts their lives at risk. His comrades didn’t know whether he was safe, had been attacked, needed back up, or anything, so they felt like they are were sitting ducks their in the silence, bound to be attacked.. Sgt. James does this repeatedly throughout the movie, where he takes things into his own hand and scares those around him because he thinks it is convenient for himself..
Sgt.

James defies the fear and sense of alertness that goes along with disarming these bombs. He is reckless, calm, casual, idiotic, and arrogant. But what allows him to be like this and succeed at what he does is his expertise in defusing the IEDs. This personality in a war highly unlikely. Sgt. James acts like he doesn’t care, and as if what he is doing is easy. This is what infuriates the veterans. They think they way he went about the missions and defusing the IEDs was absurd and not at all what it is really like. A bomb disposal team leader said in an article from 2010 in the Air Force Times that the main character’s “swagger would put a whole team at risk. Our team leaders don't have that kind of invincibility complex, and if they do, they aren't allowed to operate. A team leader's first priority is getting his team home in one piece." Recklessness was a constant theme throughout the film. Another theme throughout the story is the helplessness and the difference between America and Iraq. In one scene, there was an innocent man who was forced to be a suicide bomber. He was slowly walking towards the U.S. Army as they were yelling at him to stop and open his jacket. He finally listened and revealed a vest that had been locked to himself with several explosives, with a timer near its end. Sgt. James tried to clip all the locks from the man’s vest, but time was running out. There were too many locks and too little time, and there was nothing in their control of what was

about to happen, the man was going to explode. The sense of helplessness was displayed in this scene, especially from the expression of the man’s face who knew he was about to die. The difference between the culture and norm from the U.S. and Iraq is crazy. Here in America, a person arrested for a DUI can make local news, but someone who is forced to bomb himself and surroundings is a common occurrence in Iraq. “Thoughtful contemplation of the Iraq disaster - not to speak of indignation or protest - is not the film's aim. Rather it seeks to tell personal stories of men in war, how they differ, how they cope, or not, with each other and with the daily grind of imminent danger.” The movie did definitely depict this, but not to a realistic extent according to the veterans.
The hardships that these veterans faced while in war were falsely depicted to American civilians.

It causes for a sense of under-appreciation from the civilians towards the efforts made by people in the military to protect America. No one would ever be as reckless and nonchalant as Sgt. James

was.