Usually success is a combination of talent, hard work and luck. Then again, a movie like this gets the Best Picture Oscar and one can only wonder: did the members of the Academy vote FOR this movie or against James Cameron? Sure, his arrogance did not make things easy; then again, one should not underestimate envy and spite as human motivation.
Inaccuracies and obvious mistakes run rampant; the Saving Private Ryan -wannabe camera shakes you into nausea; the plot line is abandoned in the sand again and again and (what is worse) there is absolutely nothing waiting at the end. No catharsis, no message, no moral, no closure. Nothing.
Platoon defined the Vietnam war not only with its realism and its ability to paint all the shades of moral ambiguity but also because because it had the guts to send a clear political message. In dire contrast, The Hurt Locker offers only a deafening silence on all these aspects.
The movie presents this war, with some of the sacrifices and atrocities it entails, as inevitable and expected. Keep enlisting, keep fighting and keep dying for the corporations and the banks - but don't you dare speak your opinion on the matter. Its message is a cowardly "don't ask - and we are not going to tell you why either".
Because self-censorship is the worse kind of censorship, this is Hollywood at its worse.
A spineless pseudo-documentary masquerading as an art movie. A cowardly film trying to capitalize on the stories of brave men thrown into unwinnable war.
A film made by errand boys, sent by grocery clerks, to make sure the bill of blood is being paid in full. Again and again.
Pass. With extreme prejudice.
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