the hurt locker

I had the chance to watch hurt locker before I went on holiday.

I must say I was quite impressed. In case you don't know, Hurt Locker won the best film Oscar and I'm afraid I'm one of those people who tends to automatically look for the negative when I watch a film that has such an accolade.

And if I'm honest there are some negatives here, mainly in the accuracy stakes. Basically, the film follows a bomb disposal squad during their rotation in the most recent Iraqi conflict. It isn't entirely clear what the time is in relation to the declared 'victory', but the impression I got was that it was after, but not long after.

So, in other words the film is after what would be the toppling of Saddam and into the early part of the occupation by US forces. The idea then is because the film follows a bomb disposal squad, they're incredibly busy, because the insurgents are at their maximum and so they're planting lots of IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices or roadside bombs).

A problem then is that the activities of the city's occupants don't really reflect that freshness of conflict. The people don't seem like they're worried about the imminent threat of conflict where the soldiers seem much more twitchy. So, for example, the markets are thriving and people seem content to generally hang out and go about their daily business, which tends to suggest it's a long time after the conflict proper.

Another problem is the way the bomb disposal team operates. Firstly, they seem very poorly manned - there's only three of them - and they also seemed to operate in rather unsecured situations.

By that I mean that civilians weren't being properly kept away and any other army support seemed to be either stand-offish or actively unhelpful. For example, there's one point where they're sent in to undertake a sort of forensic examination of a bomb attack, but the thing is the bomb seems to have literally gone off minutes before.

First off, I'm not sure they'd be required to do that sort of examination anyway, but I would be amazed if they'd do it so soon after the explosion. Especially since it's the middle of the night and there doesn't appear to be any other soldiers about. What if there was a sniper or a secondary bomb?

And yet despite those things, the film really does work.

I think the reason is that it's not trying to be accurate, but is instead trying to convey things like mood and the affects combat has on soldiers.

One area where it particularly succeeds is in showing you how confusing and haphazard the relationships between the occupiers and the occupied is. You really feel of isolation and culture clashes.

The effects on the soldiers is slightly less successful, because of the focus on a bomb squad. Now if you think about it, the dangerous, maverick actions of the squad leader would be picked up very quickly and result in him being removed or taken away. Maybe this sort of stuff wouldn't be picked up if he were an ordinary grunt, but in the bombsquad, he would be identified and weeded out before he even got that far.

But as I say, if you ignore the idea of accuracy and simply take the specifics as a convenient way of portraying some more general points then the film works very well.