Friday 30 April 2010

The Locker of Hurtfulness

Ladies and gentlemen, the word of the day is... set pieces. Some people may argue that that is two words but they would miss the point, which is that Oscar apparently equals vignettes.

Witness as the EOD team dispose of a bomb. Then of another bomb. Then see one of them buy a DVD. Then another bomb. Then they punch each other. Then another bomb... Hello? Throughline? Or better still: point? "War is a drug" is supposed to be a near tag line for this, but from watching the movie the correct phrase should be "adrenaline is a drug", which is approaching oxymoron levels of observation. War is an excuse, a way of getting the drug featured in the movie, not the drug itself.

The performances are... consistent. Which might sound like a good thing, but by this I mean that the characters are the same at the end as they are in the beginning. Yep, no character growth either. Does mean this movie could have been reordered without much effort. And yes, there are the three big names of Guy Pearce, David Morse and Ralph Fiennes (and some might throw in Evangeline Lilly for a more flavour of the month cameo), but they are blink and miss moments, which aren't that missed.

Clearly the Oscar committee knows far better than me, and they say this picture should be seen. Who am I to point out this movie isn't all that?

[END]

3 comments:

evildicemonkey said...

I had not even heard of this film until you wrote that, I have no interest in seeing it.
What do you think about that Oscar committee?

Foo said...

I really enjoyed the movie but saw it before all the hype and Oscar nomination. One of the reasons it appealed to me was that it wasn't the usual schlock that Hollywood seems to pump out. I get sick of the same old crap...

On another note was extremely surprised that Avatar was pretty much the same old thing we have seen before, but it was still a good film.

Re: the whole Oscar thing, I'm sure the Oscar committee thought it would be fun to have Avatar and The Hurt Locker go head to head.

Jamas Enright said...

I had already be aware of The Hurt Locker on Overthinkingit. (Don't agree with their buddy cop comparison.)

But I did end up going to see it with someone because they wanted to see it because it got the Oscars.