erm, you said some of the soldiers are bad yet they never appear in the movie -the main character WASN'T bad, he is an asshole and I did mention that in my first post here-  yet we've the ugliest from the terrorists who killed a kid and stuffed his guts with bombs and chained another guy to bombs. This is NOT a balanced movie, which is kinda the point of this thread.

Maybe it's just me but I consider the lead character to be a pretty bad guy. I had twinges of sympathy for the character because some of his fucked up mental state may have been caused by the war but it was impossible for me to actually like the guy. When I said "bad, per se", I meant that he wasn't some sort of monstrous villain, which it seems is all some of you would have found acceptable for the film to be "balanced".

It doesn't have to be him but an evil solider was required for the movie to be balanced and REAL because that's the way ANY army is anyway.

I went to see the hurt locker because it got the Oscar. Ohh goodie! Should be a great movie, right? HELL NO!! I actually had to endure to watch it until the end thinking at some point it would get any better. Got no other feeling than of throwing up. This movie was made for it's audience which is the US of A. They might like it for the little dome they live in. For any reasonable person anywhere else in the world, I can't see any other feeling than disgust for this movie.

It's been awhile since I watched the film but weren't the mercenaries pretty bad guys? It didn't make much sense for the main crew to be evil characters, as their main job was bomb disposal. That doesn't leave much room for John Rambo to pop out and start annihilating civilians.

And why exactly did there need to be an "evil" soldier? Some of their actions were evil but none of the characters stood out as champions or villains.

And, like I mentioned in the Blade Runner thread, when did this generation start preferring things to be laid out in black and white without any hint of subtlety? I commend Bigelow for not taking the cheap route out with this movie, which would have been far easier to do than what she did with the characters in the film. What some of you are advocating would have made for a shitty and predictable movie with uninspiring characters.

Yes, all Americans live in a dome, completely oblivious to the outside world. That's why the Iraq War is SO UNPOPULAR HERE.

Really, the mass generalizations about people and nations on this forum nauseate me. You can't walk into any kind of controversial thread without stumbling over some jackass making sweeping generalizations about one thing or another but then HATE it when someone has the audacity to do the same to them.

It's been a while here too but I don't rememeber bad guys at all!maybe I'll have to watch it again sometime becuase I do admit I am emotional when it comes to Iraq.

I just don't think the movie delievered how real war is and it felt unreal to me and it's an opinion you may agree or not, let's leave it at that

Also, I didn't like blade runner for many reasons but certainly not for being vague. I like vague movies

Damn, I feel like watching a moive right now lol.

Fair enough. After working in a field dominated by military and ex-military guys, I've been shown a different side of soldiers that movies rarely represent accurately and I appreciate Bigelow for attempting to bring both the good and bad of that to a film.

In my opinion, it's far too easy and cheap to just write off all military personnel as blood-thirsty maniacs driven to kill. Just like any other segment of society, reality is far more diverse than that and to tell a story that truly makes people think, that quality needs to be featured and welcomed, not just ignored and labeled as "pro war propaganda".

If you guys want to bitch about a movie that was turned pro war and destroyed its source material, start a thread about Rambo. It's a travesty what was done to that novel.

The trailers. They show shit blowing up and parts of the 1 sniper scene in the movie, they don't show the hours of boring.

The Hurt Locker: Six Oscars for a propaganda war movie

http://madamearcati.blogspot.com/2010/03/hurt-locker-six-oscars-for-propaganda.html?zx=411762e5e54ce8e0

In fact the movie is a deft piece of war propaganda. Its unsung assumption is that its US soldiers are in Iraq for some good purpose - no need to spell it out - and that lives are put at risk for some good reason, you fill in the blanks. 

The Hurt Locker as Propaganda
For a supposedly anti-war film, Kathryn Bigelow's Hurt Locker serves as a remarkably effective military recruiting tool.
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_hurt_locker_as_propaganda In general, though, you feel empathy for the soldiers when they shoot. And in this way, the full impact of the Iraq war -- at least as it was fought in 2004 -- becomes clear: American soldiers shot at Iraqi civilians even when, for example, they just happened to be holding a cell phone and standing near an IED, as Colin H. Kahl, a military analyst and Obama administration official, wrote in International Security. Even more chillingly, as Kahl explained, a U.S. commander once ordered that all middle-aged Iraqi men in a certain area could be shot.