Hurt Locker

If I'm gunna die for a word, my word's gunna be 'deconstruction'. Which I suppose is also sort of what bomb squads do for a living too, which is all rather neat. In fact, if I were the sort of person who gave ratings for such things, that fact alone would be worth at least a whole point out of something.

I can't say that I enjoyed watching it much. It was an interesting exploration of suspense in cinema, which reminded me of the start of that Hitchcock film I can never remember the name of with Charlton Heston in it, and his famous quote: "The bomb must never go off", but my brain was constantly waiting for the story to begin. Even right at the end, the very last shot I found myself thinking that maybe the film would start now. The plot constantly over the next horizon.

However the more I think about it afterwards, the more it makes sense. This is either a very good thing or a very bad thing, depending on your perspective. The fact that he's almost instantly endearing as the maverick rule breaker That this cliche is exposed and we realise that to begin with at least, we kind of liked this man who is kind of a monster. And the fact that he lives in a world where being a monster is essentially an asset.

The total absence of a character arc, which boggles the mind at first pass, on reflection seems a cunning way of saying that the myth of the hero and his story is simply that. That it takes bad storytelling to make you think about the way in which stories are told. I cannot imagine this was the authorial intent, but nuts to that guy, it had the effect nonetheless. I am glad to have watched it, but would not do so again.