An Appeal to Action Fans: Pick ‘Hurt Locker’
Jeremy Renner in The Hurt Locker
Forget about Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. It’s already gotten clobbered by critics and it’s already made more at the box office than a dozen better movies combined. See it if you want, but there’s really nothing left to say about it, is there?
On the other hand, there’s another little action movie coming out this weekend in Los Angeles and New York. It’s not opening on 4000+ screens, but it’s pretty great and proof that you can make an action movie and still have a brain in your head.
The movie is Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker. It tells the story of an elite bomb disposal squad working to keep the streets of Baghdad safe for Iraqis and Americans alike. It’s not strictly apolitical – I think it’s an anti-war picture in that it shows the excoriating effects of war on the men and women we ask to fight for us – but it’s not literally an anti-Iraq war picture either. It’s bigger than that and frankly better than any of a number of Iraq-themed films that have come out in the last few years.
Conventional wisdom has it that the country is tired of Iraq and that movies on the subject face an uphill climb in attracting audiences. It’s true, the batch of Iraq themed movies that have trickled through theaters since 9/11 have failed to catch on with wide audiences.
Though not literally an Iraq film, Peter Berg’s The Kingdom (2007) pulled in $47.5 million in the US. That’s not a bad number, but it probably didn’t even cover advertising costs on a film that cost $70 million to produce.
Kimberly Peirce’s Stop-Loss (2008) made $10.9 million, Gavin Hood’s Rendition (2007) pulled in $9.7 million, Paul Haggis’ In the Valley of Elah (2007) came in just shy of $6.8 million despite an Oscar nomination for Tommy Lee Jones, and Brian De Palma’s Redacted failed to make a blip on the box office radar with $65K.
An action thriller, a political thriller, two dramas and a “fictional documentary” all combined for less than what Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen will make this weekend.
Does that mean movies set in or about Iraq can’t succeed? It’s a headline friendly assumption to say that America doesn’t want to have its nose rubbed in an unpopular war, but I think it’s more a case of the movies in question not being very good. The Haggis film is particularly egregious for being mediocre and earnestly moralizing at the same time. Who wants to be lectured to by the class dunce?
Here are the Metacritic scores:
Transformers is critic proof and will make gobs of cash despite it’s 37 Metacritic score, but more challenging films still need critical care and feeding if they have any hope at all at finding their audience. They certainly need to score higher than 65. With that in mind, here comes The Hurt Locker sporting a healthy 91 at Metacritic as of this writing. Here are some choice review quotes:
A.O. Scott, The New York Times
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.
Kenneth Turan, The Los Angeles Times
The Hurt Locker has the killer impact of the explosive devices that are the heart of its plot: It simply blows you apart and doesn’t bother putting you back together again. Overwhelmingly tense, overflowing with crackling verisimilitude, it’s both the film about the war in Iraq that we’ve been waiting for and the kind of unqualified triumph that’s been long expected from director Kathryn Bigelow.
Richard Corliss, Time Magazine
The Hurt Locker is a near-perfect movie about men in war, men at work. Through sturdy imagery and violent action, it says that even Hell needs heroes.
I think the critical hype actually overstates the case a little bit, but this is exactly the kind of smaller movie that could benefit by the recently expanded best picture Oscar category. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Jeremy Renner turn up for best actor either way.
But don’t let critical hyperbole turn you off. This isn’t a stuffy, feel-bad message movie. It’s a movie with the intensity of an action film and the hint of arthouse credibility gained from having played the festival circuit. It’s gripping and exhaustingly suspenseful at times. It has enough bravado and thrills to satisfy any action junkie, but it also has interesting characters and the confidence to slow down and pause and drink in the horror of what’s happening to them.
A Michael Bay film is like a shark: it’s efficient and effective, but single-minded and stupid. If it stops swimming for a minute, it will die. Sharks are fine, but there are many kinds of fish in the sea. The Hurt Locker is one of them and if a fraction of the people who plan on hitting Transformers 2 this weekend pick Bigelow’s film instead, they can help prove conventional wisdom wrong.
Think about it. If you’re an action fan, you can fall in line for more of the same or you can show Hollywood that if it makes good movies, audiences will follow regardless of the subject matter.
Seriously. Go see The Hurt Locker.
Filed under: Opinion
Tags: Jeremy Renner, Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker
“I think what we have here is a dead shark.”
–Woody Allen
I’ve been wanting to see this for what feels like an eternity. I recommend taking a view of Bigelow’s earlier action work, perhaps especially the underrated Point Break (one of the best, sharpest films of the modern kinetic “action” genre). It will make you all the more excited to see The Hurt Locker, which looks amazing.
I’ve been wanting to see an Iraq War film which created an intricate, detailed environment, and didn’t reflexively posture. At this point, The Hurt Locker is this year’s The Dark Knight or Broken Flowers for personal anticipation for me from the dog days of summer.
I agree with the concept that the Iraq War isn’t the easiest sell–people primarily reach for “escapism”–but you’re entirely correct that the mediocrity of those films were possibly just as decisive in their commercial (and critical) undoing.
The Hurt Locker may actually be the perfect melange: unlike those films, it’s a summer release, it’s being marketed as a smart action film, and it happens to take place in Iraq. And any Robert Aldrich fan should probably be looking for references to 10 Seconds to Hell.
I’m happy to see you championing this, Craig. I’m hoping I can at least marginally hold back expectations whenever I’m able to finally see it.
Like I said, I think the hype might be getting a little much and I hesitate to add to it, but this is a very good movie and it deserves some of the box office love of Transformers.
I think there are some cliched bits and it sags some when it starts getting psychological, but who knows. I saw it back in January and maybe a fresh perspective will re-open my eyes.
I’d like to see cultural pseudo-warriors like Jeff Wells proved wrong. If Locker stiffs, I’ll be forced to conclude he’s right and that people really would rather stick their heads in the sand than be engaged by the world around them.
I’m definitely interested in this and it sounds like it will be another beacon in the summer of our discontent.
And I didn’t see the first Transformers, so why start now?
Hey, the Iraq War hasn’t been a complete loss for reflective artwork that is equally entertaining and smart. HBO’s 2008 mini-series Generation Kill is on DVD/Blu-ray and it was very good. From the same folks that brought you The Wire. Sure it clocks in at 7 hours, but it’s seven hours better spent than watching any of 2008’s Iraq War-inspired movies. Hell, it’s seven hours better spent than watching most of the mainstream movies that have come in the first half of this entire year.
Otherwise, I’m very curious about The Hurt Locker. I think Bigelow is a decent director of mainstream fare and I enjoy the guilty pleasure that is Point Break, so hopefully this will fill the void that Summer has so far left in my (good) action movie-loving heart.
I still think “In the Valley of Elah” is the best of the Iraq war films. I love it. Calling Paul Haggis the “class dunce” is a bit condescending, no?
“Hurt Locker” is excellent though. It’s reminiscent of “Battle for Haditha” (which I also have a great deal of respect for), but more accomplished.
I wasn’t a big fan of In the Valley of Elah. Tommy Lee Jones’s performance was phenomenal, in my opinion, and that made the movie for me.
But I know several people who really loved the movie. 65 isn’t a great metacritic score but it’s still in the acceptable green zone (I think). Maybe it’s yellow, mixed to average reviews. I’ll have to check.
Have you made it your mission to bust my balls for routine blog hyperbole lately Matthew?
Coincidentally, I just revisited In the Valley of Elah last night for the first time.
It’s still highly annoying in places, but I was struck by how much of the cast came to be seen in No Country for Old Men. Josh Brolin, Tommy Lee Jones and even Barry Corbin, who in each film has a quiet conversation with Jones. And then there’s Roger Deakins. (Elah has some effectively rendered cinematography.)
It’s not the worst movie ever made, but as any kind of crime procedural/thriller, it’s an outright failure. I’ll give Haggis one thing, I think he means what he says, at least, so there is that. Much like Crash, it’s a picture where a couple of the performances mitigate at least some of the more egregiously schematic characteristics of the film.
I think the point of calling Haggis a dunce is to condescend to him.
The hit-you-over-the-head themes and TV-movie-of-the-week “realism” aside, I didn’t think “In the Valley of Elah” was that bad. Tommy Lee Jones was particularly good in it (with NCfOM, he had a great year). And though you could still feel Haggis’ heavy hands and greasy fingerprints all over it, it was less blatantly obvious and manipulative than “Crash.” Finally, the cinematography by Roger Deakins is beautiful and appropriately understated–though it’s justifiably overlooked when compared to the other films he lensed. Overall, I can’t look down on Elah. It’s not a masterpiece by any standard, but it certainly wasn’t “mediocre.”
Interesting to note: Mark Boal co-wrote (EDIT: the story) Elah (was based on).
I exaggerate because heavy-handedness is a huge pet peeve of mine when it comes to movies. It was definitely mediocre in comparison to its meaningful pretensions, though in the big pictured compared to all the other movies that come out in a given year it was not bad.
It was much better than Crash.