After 2 hours and 10 minutes of war, bombs, shooting and lots of cussing I actually wanted my 130 minutes back. War movies are about the only types of movies I'll leave the violence, disturbing imagery and bloodshed unfiltered, because of it's nature. It's war, plain and simple, it's real and it happens. Generally speaking, war movies aren't glorified violence-fests, like you'd find in the Elm Street or Jason slasher's.
Why did I want my 130 minutes back, I didn't see where there was much of a story. We follow the main character around after he replaces the last bomb defuser that was killed in a bomb shockwave. We don't have a definitive direction the movie is headed, like with Saving Private Ryan, or Black Hawk Down. We simply have the bomb squad being called in when they see trip wires, a car bomb and the like and get to see some desert shoot outs from insurgents and the troops. Lots of swearing is everywhere in this movie and the violence was no where near what I'd would have expected from an R. Saving Private Ryan and Black Hawk down were far more graphic and disturbing than Hurt Locker.
Despite allowing ClearPlay to let the violent related content come through there were a lot of skipped content that I wouldn't have expected, because I guess that a lot of the dialogue in the movie was brainless profanity, as it was rated R for violence and language.
The Hurt Locker (Rated R) - with ClearPlay shields at maximum - has a common sense rating of PG-13. Due to the lack of bloody, graphic and gory violence, I'm sure if the director took out all the swearing this would have been pretty easy to give a 13 instead of an R.
I'm assuming that the MPAA justified in giving this movie an R was for a suicide bomber - and 1 soldier in a non-related scene - get killed in a blast that envelopes the characters in dust and smoke. You know these guys are toast, but you don't see body parts flying, etc and you really don't get taken by surprise. It's pretty obvious that the 2 that are at the epicenter of the blast were going to get taken out by these bombs.
It almost felt I was riding around on the show "Cops." A lot of what was happening felt very random and pointless. I didn't feel like the movie was coming to fruition, except maybe to watch and see if the bomb squad finished their last 30 days of their tour. I'll be happy to go back and watch Saving Private Ryan any day. SPR has far more emotion and edge of your seat moments than this Desert Storm version of Cops.
Best Picture of 2009? Seriously??? After recently watching District 9, I'd put that as a better picture than Hurt Locker, but still wouldn't proclaim Dist 9 as the best picture either. However Dist 9 definitely had more going for it than this picture did. Parents are better off letting their kids watch a "real" war movie than this boring time waster.
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