d21lewis said:
My modern war movie of choice is Jarhead. I liked it a lot more than Hurt Locker.
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Jarhead was very good, too.
For me Full Metal Jacket remains the most intellectually satisfying war movie - perhaps not a surprise with Kubrick as a director.
Jarhead was great too, though, and I thought really showed the clear juxtaposition between how much soldiers are essentially waiting around trying to find ways to amuse themselves vs actually involved in action. The scenes around the burning oil wells were superb, too.
The Hurt Locker is a different beast for me, a very stripped down film focused on a few simple, clear concepts and deliberately unburdened by any need to try and address other issues. Rather like Full Metal Jacket it is more a construction of a small number of extended scenes vs a more traditional film narrative, with each intended to offer a building glimpse into the minds of the men on the ground. Funnily enough one of the best scenes for me was when Renner's character returned to the US and his confusion in the supermarket. Both darkly funny and rather sad.
In some ways I think it might have been better if they hadn't chosen Iraq as the setting, simply because the proximity of the conflict occludes the fact the film actually isn't remotely about the Iraq conflict at all, despite having that as it's setting. But on the other hand, as with Jarhead the film really does a great job of re-creating the sense of the place, and I guess if you want to make a film about ascpects of combat you have to pick some combat setting at the end of the day.
Together with Jarhead, I think both do offer an interesting glimpse at one facet of certain experiences certain soliders had in that setting.
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