Hurt Locker itself refers to the thick protective clothing on the bomb disposal soldiers. Of course, judging from the movie, this layer of high-tech clothing does not necessarily help them escape when the bomb explodes. Although "Avatar" now has a sweeping attitude, the film directed by Cameron's ex-wife Kathryn Bigelow has formed a confrontation with it at various film festivals this year. Good story. She got rid of the shackles that most female directors could only shoot romantic films or niche movies. She was good at shooting various action films when she debuted, which is an anomaly. Marriage with Cameron was also a spark that broke out in a certain cooperation. Even after the breakup, Cameron still has a "satisfaction" for her.
At the beginning of the film, you might think this is a heroic film featuring Guy Pearce: American soldiers rescued Iraqi civilians from the threat of bombs. But within a few minutes, he returned to Huangquan. The murderer didn't know who it was—the emergency pass for bomb disposal. An Iraqi butcher’s owner dialed his cell phone nearby, and the cell phone signal caused an explosion. But there is no evidence that the butcher's boss was deliberate, and the American soldiers could not make up their minds to shoot at the butcher's boss in exchange for the lives of their companions.
The new leader of the bomb disposal team, William James, is completely opposite to the former leader played by Guy. He does not follow the procedure and is more like a lone ranger, and his personality is stubborn. Will give up. This is an ideal typical protagonist of a cowboy-style Hollywood movie. The male protagonists of "Avatar" and "Interstellar Travel" are copies of this character. It’s just that from the western United States to the streets of Iraq, everything is different. There are no longer those black and white sceneries, no beautiful alien women to help solve language problems, only strangers are like aliens, and there are constantly devastated with cold guns and bombs. Alleys. And this is probably a common problem faced by American soldiers overseas. "The Hurt Locker" only expresses it frankly: they don't know how to communicate with locals, and locals are not interested in communicating with them.
They think that they are bringing well-being to the people of foreign countries, but the locals do not appreciate it. And they can't really cross the cultural divide to understand the people they are helping. James thinks he has made friends with the Iraqi kid "Beckham" who can speak a few words in English at the entrance of the barracks and sells pirated DVDs. He saw the body of the "body bomb" kid in the factory and determined that it was "Beckham." So he sneaked out of the barracks and forced the locals to take him to the home of "Beckham". As a result, he really recognized the wrong person. "Beckham" appeared at the gate of the barracks the next day. The streets of Iraq were filmed as strange as an alien planet, and James walked through it, and the atmosphere was as tense as a bomb disposal scene.
The tense atmosphere of bomb disposal runs through the film, and there are unforeseen encounters, everything is unknown. Even superstars like Ralph Fiennes didn’t take much part in the scene. The bounty killer he played was killed by an invisible enemy from a long distance within 15 minutes after his appearance. . Unlike the previous Hollywood movies, the bad guys are always different from flesh and blood. The enemies in this movie are all invisible. There are a lot of subjective shots that seem to imply that he dropped a bomb, and there are subjective shots of a sniper, but in the end these people are blurred. This is a bit reminiscent of the European film "Caché" directed by Haneke. The difference is that this is a Hollywood product after all. The theme itself keeps wandering between life and death, making the adrenaline secretion more vigorous. And the most important difference is that the United States has a real war to face, although the enemy it faces is invisible, as shown in the movie.
Some people might interpret this movie as a defense of war, especially the image of James, a lonely hero. According to the usual Hollywood logic, it should be an object of praise. But everything is probably not so simple. James is a "freak" who has been alienated by the war to be unable to integrate into his family life and just wants to go to the front line. He would even keep the fuzes removed from each bomb disposal as a souvenir. His comrades thought this habit was really creepy. He was just a dazed hero, in a strange place, doing what he thought was the right thing, and chose to return to the battlefield to continue the bomb disposal. The problem raised by the movie has not been resolved. Who is the enemy? How to eliminate the estrangement? This is probably also the director's question to the United States.
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