|
The Hurt Locker |  | Director: Kathryn Bigelow
Actors: Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty, Ralph Fiennes, Guy Pearce
Studio: Summit Entertainment
Category: DVD
List Price: $26.99
Buy Used: $11.34
as of 3/13/2010 00:31 CET details
You Save: $15.65 (58%)
New (31) Used (17) from $11.34
Seller: cdexchange-9
Rating:  230 reviews
Sales Rank: 9
Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), Spanish (Dubbed)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Region: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 131 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 5.4 x 0.7
MPN: SUMD66112279D
UPC: 025192048555
EAN: 0025192048555
ASIN: B00275EGWY
Theatrical Release Date: June 26, 2009
Release Date: January 12, 2010
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
| |
| Similar Items:
| |
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Iraq. Forced to play a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse in the chaos of war an elite army bomb squad unit must come together in a city where everyone is a potential enemy and every object could be a deadly bomb. Studio: Uni Dist Corp. (summit) Release Date: 01/12/2010 Starring: Jeremy Renner Run time: 131 minutes Rating: R
Amazon.com
The making of honest action movies has become so rare that Kathryn Bigelow's magnificent The Hurt Locker was shown mostly in art cinemas rather than multiplexes. That's fine; the picture is a work of art. But it also delivers more kinetic excitement, more breath-bating suspense, more putting-you-right-there in the danger zone than all the brain-dead, visually incoherent wrecking derbies hogging mall screens. Partly it's a matter of subject. The movie focuses on an Explosive Ordnance Disposal team, the guys whose more or less daily job is to disarm the homemade bombs that have accounted for most U.S. casualties in Iraq. But even more, the film's extraordinary tension derives from the precision and intelligence of Bigelow's direction. She gets every sweaty detail and tactical nuance in the close-up confrontation of man and bomb, while keeping us alert to the volatile wraparound reality of an ineluctably foreign environment--hot streets and blank-walled buildings full of onlookers, some merely curious and some hostile, perhaps thumbing a cellphone that could become a trigger. This is exemplary moviemaking. You don't need CGI, just a human eye, and the imagination to realize that, say, the sight of dust and scale popped off a derelict car by an explosion half a block away delivers more shock value than a pixelated fireball. The setting may be Iraq in 2004, but it could just as well be Thermopylae; The Hurt Locker is no "Iraq War movie." Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal--who did time as a journalist embed with an EOD unit--align themselves with neither supporters nor opponents of the U.S. involvement. There's no politics here. War is just the job the characters in the movie do. One in particular, the supremely resourceful staff sergeant played by Jeremy Renner, is addicted to the almost nonstop adrenaline rush and the opportunity to express his esoteric, life-on-the-edge genius. The hurt locker of the title is a box he keeps under his bunk, filled with bomb parts and other signatory memorabilia of "things that could have killed me." That none of it has killed him so far is no real consolation. In this movie, you never know who's going to go and when; even high-profile talent (we won't name names here) is no guarantee. But one thing can be guaranteed, and that is that almost every sequence in the movie becomes a riveting, often fiercely enigmatic set piece. This is Kathryn Bigelow's best film since 1987's Near Dark. It could also be the best film of 2009. --Richard T. Jameson
|
| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 230
 COPS in Iraq. March 12, 2010
mao_soup
If you like the TV show COPS, the you will probably like Hurt Locker. Like the former, however, I found this movie very dull and anticlimactic. There was no character development per se, ergo no plot, ergo boring. There are a few cool scenes, some explosions. I love the scene where he is staring at the row of cereal at the end. That was brilliant. This is just how it feels when you come back after living in a foreign country! Also, a nice cameo by Kate from Lost. Also, what the heck is with that sniper scene where he takes out the guy as he is running. Maybe this is possible in Call of Duty, but I seriously doubt it in real life. Snipers have years of training and this guy just picks up the dead guys Barrett and goes to town? No sir.
The problem with this movie is not so much that it is pretentious, in my opinion, the problem is that none of it really amounts to anything. Nobody really changes, nothing goes anywhere, and it's all just so much cinema verite gas. Not one I will care to see again, though it was worth seeing once.
That Many Oscars? Really? March 12, 2010
B. Merritt (WWW.FILMREVIEWSTEW.COM, Pacific Grove, California United States)
I was beginning to hold out some hope (however little) that the Oscars might have been steering away from political correctness and social appeasement when, last year, Slumdog Millionaire took home 8 of the 10 categories it was nominated in, including Best Picture. A "feel-good" movie made on a $15 million budget with no-name actors, it came out of nowhere and blindsided many viewers and Academy voters. Pleasantly surprised, I flipped on the Oscars this year (2010) and watched the who's who for films in 2009.
I'm not going to take any large swings as THE HURT LOCKER because it was a good movie. I enjoyed the action, the tension, the acting. It was all nicely pulled together. But, out of the ten Best Picture nominees this year, was it really the stand-out? I felt that the Academy was slipping, once again, into the realm of trying to be "significant" and "modern" by voting for something that's on everyone's mind (the war in Iraq). Again, the movie was okay. Good. Adequate. But head-and-shoulders above such films as Inglourious Basterds? District 9? Up in the Air? I humbly disagree that it was. And there was nothing in it that we haven't seen before: a war movie with internal angst and a man lost amidst society when he returns home. Jeremy Renner (28 Weeks Later) did a fine job as the risk-taking Sergeant James but, again, he was channeling every other warrior brought into a tough situation that we've seen on celluloid a gazillion times.
From reading what you've read of my review so far, you might think that I'm being more critical of the Academy than the film. That's partially correct. But when so much attention is heaped upon one film (including Best Director ...which we'll cover in a moment) and so many people think that this is "the film to watch" and not the other nominees that won little or nothing, I believe of informing those who might choose to read this of their folly should they not see something like District 9 or -- one that didn't even get mentioned -- Moon.
Let's hit on the Best Director item...
No female director has ever won an Oscar before Kathryn Bigelow did for The Hurt Locker. So what! We never elected a black President before Obama. Does that mean we should give him every break just because no other black man has ever sat in the White House? No! You win because you deserve to win, not because it's never happened to someone of your kind before. Was the directing of The Hurt Locker better than Inglorious Basterds? Was it? Sorry, but I completely disagree if you think it was.
I will say that I'm glad AVATAR didn't win Best Picture or Best Director. But to completely blank out such phenomenal films as DISTRICT 9 and other worthy competitors is simply ridiculous.
I think it's important for me to say here that I completely support our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan; they risk their lives daily so that I can live the life I do over here in the U.S. They risk they're lives so that I can write something like this about a film they may care deeply about. But caring deeply about a subject like The Hurt Locker and elevating it above other films does a disservice to the art of film-making and film-makers when you over-rate a movie based on it's significance in the world today and not on its art.
For me, the top films of 2009 were DISTRICT 9, INGLORIOUS BASTERDS and MOON. Two got a smidgin of notice and one never saw the light of the Oscar ballots. Check those films out before deciding where the awards should've landed for movies made in 2009. Please.
An okay action film without a political message March 12, 2010
John W. Crockett
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
After reading some of the other reviews, I thought I'd write one of my own.
If you haven't seen this film and you're looking for an action film that isn't too deep and doesn't force-feed you a political message, then this film will fit that requirement. If you're expecting an accurate portrayal of an EOD specialist in Iraq or what life is like for the military on a day-to-day basis, I don't think this is it.
I know the movie has been touted by critics to be very realistic. There are many factors that may have contributed to this claim of realism. The movie does omit many of the long-time Hollywood standards, like trampoline jumps and spittoon-sounding ricochets. The absence of these acrobatics and unrealistic sounds might make it seem more realistic to viewers.
The way injuries were portrayed was more realistic than you might find in other action/war movies of the same genre. Unlike Rambo films where all injuries are superficial, when someone was wounded in this film, that person didn't get up in the next scene and act like the life-threatening wounds he'd received minutes ago were mere scratches. Someone with a leg injury actually had to go to the hospital and couldn't use that leg to walk, run, or deliver a roundhouse kick to a bad guy and a guy standing next to an exploding device was actually killed, not just flipped into the air.
The movie also avoids making a definitive political message. Even if in reality, soldiers often vocalize their political views, the makers of the film didn't use the characters as a mouthpiece for their own political views, which I think is a positive point. I think the film neither glamorizes war or makes soldiers look like bloodthirsty murderers.
I think it's also fair to say that the movie pointed out that being in EOD requires a special kind of personality; someone who goes toward the source of imminent danger while everyone else is headed the other way. At the same time, the techniques the protagonist (SFC James) used to dismantle explosives was pure Hollywood. The movie didn't have the trope-laden red wire/blue wire dilemma or the over-used plot device where a bomb's timer stops with one second to spare, but I don't think any current or former EOD specialist would say that the techniques shown in the film are even remotely accurate, especially carelessly pulling on wires with enough force to uproot a series of artillery rounds.
The dialogue and character development were both fairly good. The movie avoided the cheap one-liners so popular these days and also didn't stereotype any of the characters. Each person had his own qualities and set of problems, some of which get resolved and others that don't. The characters' interactions with one another were believable. I did have a hard time relating to the protagonist, though, mostly because of his inability to recognize what was wrong with disregarding the safety of the men in his unit while he was playing cowboy and doing his own thing. Later in the film, it's revealed that he had some compassion for the men he works with, but this doesn't make up for the times he needlessly endangers them, even if it does seem to work out for him (more or less).
With all that being said, I don't think it was a horrible film if taken at face value, but I also don't think it is an eye-opening new look at the war in Iraq or a snapshot of the day-to-day dangers faced in combat.
 review March 12, 2010
Lenin
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
I just had to give this movie 1 star. It's just amazing how masmedia can manipilate a crowd. Those people can feed any bs they want like toyota unsafe (like those people care about your safety), go see twilight new moon wonderful movie ( why not to give this family flick oscar too? ). I agree with octoworm's kid's review. It's pathetic, unrealistic, pretentious, masterpiece wanna be pog.
It's just shows to world again what all this oscar "awarding" dirty business is. Mel Gibson was right.
 The Hurt Locker March 11, 2010
Arnita D. Brown (USA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
The Hurt Locker presents the conflict in the Middle East from the perspective of those who witnessed the fighting firsthand the soldiers. As an elite Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal team tactfully navigates the streets of present-day Iraq, they face the constant threat of death from incoming bombs and sharp-shooting snipers. In Baghdad, roadside bombs are a common danger. I have a friend that is EOD, and he and I watched this movie, he said that while this movie is a bit of a far cry as to how they really operate, it's still a really entertaining movie. He said military guys know, you can't exactly go rogue too many times, because the hammer of authority will come down upon you. The constant threat of dying, hot and heavy bomb suits, the robots, the tempermental personalities in conflict with one another, strained lives back home, and silly officers who filter into a situation with the idea of taking charge yet have no idea what's going on, now that is entirely true to life. But it makes for a good story. The acting is really quite good and the directing is awesome. For those who like military movies or just action movies, this one is a good.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 230
|
|
|
CERTAIN CONTENT THAT APPEARS ON THIS SITE COMES FROM AMAZON SERVICES LLC. THIS CONTENT IS PROVIDED ‘AS IS’ AND IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE OR REMOVAL AT ANY TIME. Reklama Internete | | Best Friends | | commanders mall anywhere Reklama Internete succeeds possible whereas
talent wisdom establish biuro kedes gateways northrop and
architecture hungarian delivered biuro baldai actor slated mail
red vines party perry engineering george
surprise marketplace lined Russian girlfriend ashton-tate aging appreciate
|
|
|
|
