I confess I couldn't watch more than twenty minutes of The Hurt Locker. Bigelow's reportage style is a carbon copy of the method used by the makers of The Wire in The Corner and later in their HBO series about the Iraq war, Generation Kill. The technique consist in shooting the film as though the camera is an objective observer (which it isn't) with characterisations so realistic in a deliberate effort not to orchestrate a bond between them and the audience (which it doesn't). This technique leaves me cold and indifferent. When you couldn't care less if bomb specialists get blown to smithereens, you might as leave the theatre (which I did). Members of the Academy get props for not pandering to the commercial success of Avatar, a film so simplistic and ridiculous in its rhetorical intentions, the three year-old in me was insulted its lack of sophistication.
So, here goes my best movie of the year. Though this may not be much of a recommendation, I'll bet any Iraq vet would prefer Anvil! The Story of Anvil to The Hurt Locker. Anvil! is one of the greatest ode to dedication, lifelong friendship and the difference that having a supporting family can make to one's life. Hope is Anvil, not the Na'vi people. There is more truthfulness in this film than in a pseudo-documentary about the Iraq war.
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