Hurt Locker Film Analysis

1- This was a great movie but although I have seen it before it is definetly a good choice to see it again. This movie is complex in the sense that you have to watch it more than once to understand the situation at hand. Not only that, but you need to realize the severity of the present war and that the soldiers fighting the war can't make the choice who lives or who dies. It was amazing however, that the audience could feel such a connection to the characters in the film. Such as the start of the movie we see the sergeant get killed by the blast radius from the explosion. It has not been twenty minutes yet we already feel remorse for the character because we understand he died an honorable soldier and man in the line of duty.

2- Everything comes into place at the beginning of the film, we understand the location, the mood, and the emotion the soldiers feel. This movie was set in Iraq and even though it is a war zone some shots show that there are actual people living there merely because it is there home. Iraq is portrayed as a dangerous place where you feel you could not survive one day because of the fighting; you might die in a cross fire or get hit in the skull by a frag grenade, the place is very chancy. The director was able to show us that soldiers are actual people with actual lives and that they taking risks to help our country and others as well; the american soldiers are not just numbers than can be distributed like ponds.

3- The camera work differs from other works (such as the steady camera panning). In this movie the camera is shaky almost all the time. This adds to the dramatic tension in the video because the camera shaking symbolizes the chaos of every situation these soldiers endure every day. I believe the actors did a great job in there rolls:

Thompson as the first team leader that was so cool that he could never be replaced esaily,

Sanborn as the responsible trooper (who follows procedure but is not in charge to make his job difficult),

Eldridge the trooper that fears that he will die any day: he is also careful for example he asks Sanborn if he should kill the Hajii.

Lastly there was Sergeant James who was the to cool for the rules as in he did not follow the procedures so that he could be unpredictable to the enemy.

These actors did a great job in inputing mixed feelings in the squad and so did the costume designers. The designers did a very nice job because not only did they give the correct outfit to put on but they most likely got an army expert and asked him about the ranks. I personally double checked the ranks and they were the correct ones as depicted in the film. For example, Sergeant James would call "Specialist" (which is the third rank in the army) and you can take his word that he is a specialist.

4- The movie is very realistic in a way because usually we don't see this kinds of things but as we hear about them on the news our minds paint images for us and we try to piece things in a ways so that they end up something like we would see in the Hurt Locker - therefore this movie is very realistic to us. You can count on this movie to tell what is going on and where it is happening. What the director decides to do is do an establishing shot of the current situation at hand and then he focuses on other "sub" situations before he cuts to the arrival of the main characters. The director does this so us as audiences can try to predict what will happen an kind of get a sense of the pandemonium. As the characters arrive and the start doing there job as soldiers, the camera is mostly in a close up or an extreme close up. This is so that we share the same emotions that the character try (and succeed to) portray.

5- The editing had manny variations. Most of the time in the movie as the action got more and more intense the camera got shakier and the shots were cut a lot faster from one point to another. This was a ways for the director to make us realize how little time the soldiers have to think and that they have to make split second decisions because it is life or death. But there were some times when the shots were slow passed because the soldiers do have time to relax but not always. The director focuses on Specialist Eldridge because he wanted to show that even in relaxed times the soldiers are still biting there nails (so to speak) and are agitated because they are so nervous. This is shown in the scenes between the Specialist and the Colonel (the doctor) as the Specialist discusses a song called "be all you can be." he asks what all he can be dead is the side of a Iraqi road. He justifies his words by saying this is war and that people die.

6- The motif of Hell was illustrated constantly as the squad had to go through many fields were choices had to be made that were life or death. For example, there was a bomb in every danger because this was a D.O.D. team. Graphic images of dead people, blood, and gore are present because this is the real world and the director tries to grasp that and enlighten the people who ARE unfamiliar with terrors of this world.

7- The script was well written in the sense that the writers knew what to make the characters say perfectly so that we the people who don't go to war and understand what is being communicated. We know that there is tension between the soldiers because every one has there own views on why they should be there or not. One circumstance is when Specialist Eldridge tries to find some sort of comic relief in war by tryin to scare Sergeant James. Although Sanborn is annoyed by what he does he still understands what he is trying to say. Sanborn comprehends what Eldridge feels because of the missions they have been on. By the end of Eldridge's dialogue we can conclude that he is vaguely asking James if he really wants to be in the military because it is just Hell.

8- The genre this movie has is action/adventure because there is non stop action, the breaks between the different bomb scenes are short showing that war does not take a break therefore you have to be on alert at all times. The reason why this movie is also an adventure is because these characters are on a never-endless quest to becoming better soldiers.

9- I have watched other war movies before and every one added a different view on how the war affects society back in the states and around the world. I feel that the Hurt Locker was definitely a great success and that it was well pieced together, the shots would not have communicated a successful message without the sound. The sound enhanced the experience and the mood - the way we felt towards these characters could not have been the same with out the sound. Therefore, the audio was a way to help us know what to feel about the situation even if our own words cold not describe it.