the hurt locker

By chance, I ended up seeing The Hurt Locker. A packed audience in a highly educated, extremely yuppy neighborhood.

Shortly after it started, I felt nauseous. Not sure if it was the crowd or the subject matter or what, I kept watching, all the while getting more nauseous. At least part of the reason was the erratic camera movements making me motion sick.

In that context, imagine my sense of shock and discomfort at the groans of disappointment when the US soldiers missed killing their target (Iraqis).

And while the tension makes you feel the soldiers' fear and emotional struggles, there are no good Iraqis in the movie. There is no questioning of what the soldiers are doing there in the first place, no comments about the bombs coming with the US invasion. There were not suicide bombers before, and it is hard to understand why any Iraqi could set bombs in his (mostly his) own country and hurt their own people, but the snapshot that is the movie does not ask why, when, who, what. It was like watching the news (US news) and seemed to go nowhere, have no clear point (except that it's hard to be a bomb defuser in Iraq, which seems obvious from the news and from any insight into what war would actually mean).

I never watch war movies. Especially not about my part of the world. And I am reminded of why- even this award-winning movie left me sick to my stomach with the injustice and horrors of war. And seemed to make absolutely no attempt to go deeper than the most superficial surface.