RANT - The Hurt Locker

We saw this a few months ago. I don't know why I didn't post a review at the time (maybe because it was un-memorable, or I was otherwise engaged), but now that it's been re-upped for Oscar season I thought I'd express my disappointment while it's still on at your local multiplex.

First of all, and I do remember this bit, Mrs. Page decided she wanted to eat before we went in to see the film. As it was on at The Embarcadero, one of the smallest theaters in town, I was double-fretting about being late.

I'm not completely anal about this (no doubt my lovely wife would disagree), but I do like to be in my seat early enough to get the right spot (not near the back where all the popcorn-crunching, slurpee-slurping, cell-phone browsing, chattering jerks usually sit; not too near the front where a stiff neck and boggled eyes are all you get for your $12), but not so early that we have to sit through ad after bleeding ad (with Pepsi or Coke ads in the double figures), with people who haven't been to the movies for a year chuckling over those damned Fandango puppets and every other no-longer-chuckle-worthy vignette, and a gazillion* other annoying elements.

Back to the food. Pavey had decided that a hot dog woudn't cut it, so we had to go into a nearby pasta restaurant and waste a half-hour on something that was wholly inaccurately described on the menu as "freshly-made pasta with succulent Italian sausage and sun-dried tomatoes".

The result? Indigestion and a seat on the end of the very first row! Boy was I grumpy.

For the next 131 minutes I stared up almost vertically to see an out-of-focus movie that was allegedly about bomb disposal but managed to feature very little "proper" bomb disposal.

For me, the only exciting part was the bit that had already been shown in all the trailers (and is even on the freaking poster), namely when the tiresomely-maverick bomb disposal expert was rooting through the sand to trace a wire back from a fistful of dynamite to its trigger mechanism, only to find the trigger led to several charges spread out in a wheel pattern.

After the film, and whenever the subject has come up since, I just could not see how Hurt Locker is worthy of the buzz its director has received. I can't even remember why the title has anything to do with the subject matter.

Maybe if one of the devices was "nucular" *, or one had actually detonated, blowing the uniforms off a couple of hot female bomb-disposal experts (but now I'm sounding like Star Trek's Patrick Stewart on Ricky Gervais' fabulous Extras - you have to see it to get the analogy) .....

In my thoroughly reliable opinion, the critical acclaim featured on the poster "A Near-Perfect Movie", "A Full-Tilt Action Picture", and "Ferociously Suspenseful" is right up there with "Jonas Brothers Release Best Album of the Year" and other obvious misprints.

Anyhow (dreadful pun warning) the whole thing bombed for me.


* Both items remind me of the no-longer-relevant but still completely accurate joke about George W. Bush asking an aide "Say, I know what a billion is, and I know what a trillion is, but how much is a brazilian?"