The Hurt Locker (DVD)

* Film Only Review* The Hurt Locker is a film that made me edgy and nervous while watching it on the big screen. I found the whole two hours and eleven minutes very uncomfortable to watch. Mainly because the director, Kathryn Bigelow, had placed me exactly where she wanted me to be - directly inside the war torn net of life in Iraq. I have seen a few movies about Iraq but this film is far superior although it may not be the most explicitly defined film. Hurt Locker doesn't have any political relevance or function. The film doesn't praise or blame - it just plunges you as a viewer into one deep hell hole. There are no momentously heroic ...  Read the complete review

Hurt Locker (2009, UK, 2008, USA) Cert. 15. Well now, I wanted to see Final destination 3D, Mrs H wanted to see Hurt Locker, we went to watch Hurt Locker. We saw this film in Sheffield Showcase, worthy of note as the screen is not as big as many cinemas, hence, some of the CGI and Special effects were not as 'big'. This cinema does feel a bit cosier, not that this is a cosy film. Kathryn Bigelow is the director and not someone whose work I am that familiar with. A woman directing an intense, male based war film is interesting in itself. Mark Boal (the writer) and others involved with the production actually went to Iraq ...  Read the complete review

A film only review. The Hurt Locker goes on general release in the UK on August 28th. DVD and Blu-ray releases are scheduled for late December. This new film about the experiences of a bomb disposal team in Iraq is genuinely impressive in a way I really wasn't expecting. It's directed by Kathryn Bigelow, who previously gave us classics like, er, Strange Days and K-19: The Widowmaker. But somehow Bigelow's always given the impression that she was capable of much better films than she's managed to make. This - a low-budget film in a genre that hasn't done too well commercially lately (Iraq is perhaps too raw a subject to be wildly successful) - might be the one ...  Read the complete review

The Hurt Locker is one of the most acclaimed films of 2009, and despite a slow start release-wise, things are finally picking up. What's more, the film is earning early buzz to become a frontrunner for the Academy Awards in March 2010. This is raw, gritty, and impressively intense filmmaking from Kathryn Bigelow, a woman extremely experienced in the art of divulging male anxiety on-screen as she has done so masterfully in films such as the guilty pleasure Point Break. This is a whole other bag altogether, and one of the more focused, intelligent films concerning the Iraq War. The film opens with an intense bomb-disposal sequence that's simply too shocking to ...  Read the complete review

The Hurt Locker was a film I had read nothing about in advance of its release. Suddenly you couldn't get away from it, it seemed like every reviewer was giving it maximum ratings and there wasn't a bad word to be said about it. So despite having almost my fill of Iraq war movies I decided to see this one as more than one reviewer mentioned it wasn't really about Iraq. I can kind of see where he was coming from as this is more about relationships and the group dynamic and it just happens to have Iraq as a backdrop. The story is of a bomb disposal unit stationed in Iraq and covers a lot of the situations they have to deal with. When I say the story, there ...  Read the complete review