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The Hurt Locker: Exploding with Power and Passion

I’m from America. I’m here to liberate your country. Why don’t you trust me?

Rating: 9 out of 10

In the years since we proved the motto “these colors never run” don’t include instances of running into other people’s countries under wildly false pretenses; we’ve seen the theaters filled with film after film dealing with the incredibly varied viewpoints of the Iraq War. Some are for the war, many are against, but all deal with the stresses and toil that it takes on the soldiers sent over there to protect us from afar and protect the civilians in that country from themselves. The biggest fear for any film covering this topic now is whether the audiences have seen it all. What more could possibly be brought to light after the 24-hour news cycle has been raking this story over the coals for nearly eight years? The answer coming from Hollywood seems to be making the stories more and more personal, connect them to individual soldiers and stories, whether they are true or based on true situations. We know why they are fighting, but we don’t always know who they are and that’s what still intrigues audiences.

The Hurt Locker centers around a bomb disposal unit in Iraq, dealing with car bombs, IEDs and any variety of homemade roadside explosive device. A new unit leader, Staff Sergeant James, finds himself trying to keep unit cohesion while not letting go of his unorthodox style of bomb defusing. Tempers flare, egos are tested, but the whole group must find a way to work together in order to keep themselves alive in their constantly hostile surroundings.

“Rare” is the first word that comes to mind when I describe this movie. In a project filled with so much inherent tension, very few are able to walk the hair thin line between too much tension, which would shut your audience down in some numb coma-type state, or too little tension, which would leave your audience bored and feeling as if the subject matter was taken too lightly. The story, the pacing and the intensity is handled beautifully by director Kathryn Bigelow, who really has had a intensely varied style of filmmaking ranging from the epitome of surfer action flicks, Point Break, to the turn-of-the-millennium sci-fi acid trip, Strange Days. No matter where she brings her vision, it always results in something unique to the current filmic landscape. With Hurt Locker, Bigelow paints a picture of three soldiers with completely different outlooks on their situation and she manages to give them all equal weight, which is an accomplishment in itself. She also is very specific with her use of camera tricks, like slow motion, so when they do appear in the film they don’t get lost in a sea of quick cuts, lens flares or unnecessary explosions. Overall it was a great effort from Bigelow and should keep her in the good graces of the Hollywood system for years to come.

Taking on the stresses of the bomb-busting trio are Jeremy Renner (Staff Sergeant James), Anthony Mackie (Sergeant Sandborn) and Brian Geraghty (Specialist Eldridge). Renner takes the point position here and leads the trio through the film with a wildcat mentality and seemingly careless attitude towards death on the job. This might have come off as a one note performance for Renner were it not for the brilliant script and the arc which his character travels. Mackie and Geragthy both show their initial discomfort with working for their new unit leader in different fashions. Mackie does a great job keeping the strong face and trying to remind Renner that they are all a team and must work together, but Geragthy has a more youthful persona and he becomes an endearing soul to the audience, swinging back and forth between emotionally shell-shocked and frantically fighting for his own freedom. Truly toned performances all around.

The Hurt Locker feels a great deal like what The Kingdom wanted to be. A balanced social commentary about life on the ground in the war zone balanced with action and tension to keep the audiences involved and attuned to the fact they weren’t watching  a documentary.

Recommendation: If it is still playing in a theater near you, check it out. The sound design alone is reason enough to not wait for DVD. If you can’t catch it on the big screen, don’t worry, the performances and poignancy of the film still carries through. Plus, you could just turn up your TV really loud.

Fast and Furious: On the Road Again…

See that light over there? That’s our future. Let’s race to see who gets there first.

Rating: 6 out of 10

There are times when a movie ends and you just feel sad because you don’t get to spend any more time with those characters. No more twists and turns in their stories and no more chances for possible redemption, if they haven’t already achieved it. Yet sometimes you get lucky and a sequel is made, then if you’re really lucky a sequel is made of that, giving you the much sought after “franchise”. Certain movies you can look at from the very first moment and know they are destined for the franchise route, but I would challenge anyone to look back into 2001 at the original The Fast and the Furious and claim they saw this coming. It spawned three subsequent films, with this newest chapter opening to over $100 million dollars worldwide in its first weekend, a record for any April movie opening in history.

No palm reader in the world would have taken that bet.

Yet Universal Pictures seemingly struck gold with Fast and Furious and there is an entire pantheon of reasons why this worked. First, and most notable, was the return of the original cast making this movie feel much more like a sequel and less like a spin-off (ie: The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift). The two main machismo machines, Vin Diesel and Paul Walker, haven’t shared the screen in eight years, so this was a huge draw for people who actually stood up for the quality of the original movie. Secondly, the original teaser trailer and the first theatrical trailer were both cut extremely well, showcasing the scope of the car stunts and the parkour-influenced foot chase with Paul Walker, which will go down in history as a close second to the foot race in Point Break with Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze (Swayze throws a dog at Reeves, that cannot be topped!). The third element, which is a little less apparent, is that this movie is an “interquel”, meaning it is not placed exactly in continual sequence with the rest. Fast and Furious actually takes place in the timeline before Tokyo Drift, which is shown to the audience in an early scene where Toretto tells his friend Han, also reprised by Sung Kang, to get out of town for a while. Han replies by saying, “I hear they’re doing some crazy stuff in Tokyo.” So they aren’t necessarily pulling the Highlander 2 maneuver, where they just ignore that the movie ever happened and continue the series without ever mentioning it, but instead they are treating Tokyo Drift more as an off-shoot, which keeps it legitimate in the universe of the characters. All in all they had every element in place for a new chapter that frankly no one thought would ever happen, but it did, in a big way.

Diesel returns to the role of Dominic Toretto, the mad-dog roughneck of the road racing world, who is now running a gasoline stealing outfit south of the border. When one heist goes slightly off the rails, Torreto is forced to move along without his comrades and his girlfriend, Letty, played once again by Michelle Rodriguez. On the other side of the border, bad boy FBI agent, Brian O’Conner, reprised by Paul Walker, is hot on the trail of a massive mafia cartel. When another mafia killing cuts too close to home, O’Conner and Toretto have to team up once again to infiltrate the cartel and bring it down. Both men are fighting for justice, yet they have slightly different definitions for it.

On paper the plot line actually holds together really well, but let’s be honest, no one watches these movies for the plot. It’s all about the cars, the crashes and the chaos. Fast and Furious makes a decent effort in all those areas, bringing the car races back to the forefront of the movie, without losing the sense of needing a storyline. That was one of the things the last chapter in this franchise, Tokyo Drift, was lacking. The racing never escalated, never changed from nearly the first screech of the tires in the movie to the last. While in Fast and Furious, the races did change throughout the film, they lose a little credit for placing their most impressive race about one-third of the way in. The scene where Diesel and Walker have to race each other along with two others in hopes of being chosen for the cartel driving squad is full of variety and intensity, yet later on the races begin to feel a touch redundant. Also, that first race had pertinent meaning for the story, whereas the later races feel tossed in just because they needed another scene of cars zooming by. No matter how silly the movie you still need to make the action on the screen make sense, otherwise the audience will drift away.

Diesel and Walker return to form in these characters and give us what we all know and love them for. Diesel proves once more that he can intimidate with only a glance and also the fact that he never sweats, ever! Walker still retains his boyish charms and continues to be endearing when he tries to act all tough on screen against Diesel. Yet, while Diesel wins the machismo battle, Walker always looks more comfortable on screen with the ladies, as he proves once more with his re-ignited love affair with Toretto’s sister, Mia, played once again by Jordana Brewster. Brewster still shows her skill in being able to make a believable on-screen connection with people who aren’t all that talented in the lighter arena of human emotions. As for Rodriguez, she is one of the original four and used heavily in the marketing of the film, but she is in only a few short minutes of the movie and really boils down to a plot device.

Recommendation: If you liked the first film in the series, you should have no problem enjoying this one. It still has holes and many parts of it could have made more sense with some basic story adjustments, but in terms of this series it is just under the original. Plus, you might as well keep track of what happens so you can be all set for the next chapter, which Paul Walker just signed on to. Faster and Furiouser!

Daily Musings 3/5

1 – The primaries last night were not the slam dunk we were hoping for on the Obama train, but the Clinton marketing engine has failed to derail us in any fashion. Obama is still ahead in the delegate count because in Texas she failed to take it by any size-able amount, meaning the delegates are fairly evenly split. While watching the coverage last night it was mentioned that there was a flowchart sent out very early on in the race between Obama and Hillary that laid out every primary and caucus and which ones they predicted Obama would take. Amazingly this document is being hailed like a Nostradamus doctrine since it’s been nearly on the nose the whole time. It predicted the loss in Ohio, the close shave in Texas and had Obama winning 10 straight in a row up to this point (it failed to believe he would win in Maine, which he did, giving him 11 in a row). So if those palm reading folks continue putting their faith in this chart, Obama will still come out ahead when the votes are all tallied up with crucial wins in the final primaries. I hope they’re right because I am someone that does want to see things change and Hillary is unfortunately showing herself to be more of the same politics we’ve had for the last 24 years.

2 – The Onion, the fake news network, is coming out with their own movie in shiny straight to DVD fashion. Kudos to Steven Seagal for being able to parody himself in what could be his best performance ever. [thanks, FilmDrunk]

3 – There is a video of this floating around, but I refuse to post it here. A US Marine is under verbal fire today, instead of literal fire, for having a fellow soldier videotape him throwing a small living puppy over the side of a cliff. I understand that war can have detrimental effects on people’s mental state and cause them to do things they would normally never do, but most of those instances come in times of intense stress and combat. This was one soldier goofing off with another and tossing a helpless animal over a cliff. Word coming out of the Marine top brass is that they are hugely disappointed and that most Marines conduct themselves with honor and respect. They are pulling together all the pertinent information now to decide what to do with this soldier, but my opinion is solidly that this person be dishonorably discharged from the Marines immediately. We have obviously been in such a rush to fill up the ranks of our Armed Forces that we are letting people in who are not there to defend our honor and our country, but people who just want to play with guns, flex their muscles and expel cruelty where they see fit. Let’s see the Marine Corps try to make a booster commercial out of that story. [via CNN]

4 – Rumors are flying around the net this morning that our favorite bouncer and dirty dancer, Patrick Swayze, is battling a very serious form of Cancer and has mere weeks to live. I desperately hope he is not as bad off as they say. Swayze may not be an Oscar winning talent, but he has helped bring about some of the greatest popcorn flicks in history. Road House not only provides some of the most hilariously violent fight scenes in history, but it also continues to serve as a measuring point for any relationship I might get into. If the girl I am interested in does not like Road House and giggle themselves silly watching it, we’re doomed from the start. But that’s only the beginning for Swayze, he also helped to bring us Ghost, The Outsiders (my personal favorite movie), Red Dawn, Dirty Dancing, Next of Kin, Point Break, Too Wong Foo: Thanks for Everything Julie Newmar and Donnie Darko. Can you imagine a happy and fulfilling life without those movies. I think not. So my thoughts and good vibes are going out to you, Dalton. May you tear Cancer’s throat out.

5 – These people have way too much time on their hands, but also way to much genius to be contained. Please enjoy, Michael Jackson’s Punch Out: [via GorillaMask via The Panda Page]

6 – The one man who did so much to bring fictional and fantastical lives to those who had none in reality has just passed away. Gary Gygax, the creator of Dungeons & Dragons, died Tuesday at 69 years old after a long battle with a variety of health problems. I was also one of those role playing kids, covering my dining room table with battle charts, dice graphs and miniature pewter figures that I would hand paint and detail myself. Admittedly I branched out from D&D pretty quickly into other system I felt work more expansive, like Marvel and G.U.R.P.S, but somehow I think that admission just made me more of a dork than before. Oh well. Gary helped to ignite the world of role playing and the nerds, geeks, dweebs and closet cool kids of the world owe him a debt of gratitude for that. You rolled a true 100, Gary. Thanks for the memories.  [via CNN]

7 – In my mind Robert Downey Jr. can do no wrong on film (not making any claims about his personal life), but doing a role of a role in blackface? Our boy might be straying from the land of logic just a touch. Luckily, Iron Man will come out before this controversial role and we will all get to experience the full gooey excitement over the comic book extravaganza. [via FilmDrunk]

8 -  The Pearl Jam parody rendition of “Old MacDonald’s Farm” is one of the joys of my life: [via Pandachute]

Kids Rock

9 – The Dragonball Z live action adaptation is being pushed from this year until 4/3/09. Some reports are claiming it is because the release weekend was getting too crowded with other big ticket fare. My thought is they had no real idea how long it was going to take to animate all those crazy diagonal lines every time someone jumped in the air. Also, the budget for blond super spiky hair gel has skyrocketed.  [via ComingSoon]

10 – What’s that you say? You want more Touhou videos!? Well here you go, it’s Hot Pockets time: