The Hurt Locker (2008) - Full Reaction

Won 6 Oscars including Best Picture and Best Director (Kathryn Bigelow). Well deserved.

Clay F

100 times better.

Joe M

I do! And I thought that was just for capitalizing letters! Google should have made that more clear….. but thank you! look at me! starting new paragraphs! lol 😎

Jeff Milcheck

Since theyre totally different movie this is a really strange comment.

warcrimes

I knew a guy who this reminded me of and he would sit outside the pizza inn just waiting to be called. This movie showed a lot of the fear you have at everything when you’re deployed and knowing everyone could end everything for you at any second on the road. IEDs and VBIEDs. I was a 19-year-old kid when I went over in 2004, and this movie always reminds me of how shit everything could get. Plus that detonation when you see the flash and the pressure kick up a millisecond before you hear the explosion… it’s the most realistic explosion I ever saw on film. Just my two cents.

oh my god shut up you inbred

Isaiah Porter

we lost a few compared to the the other guy we had a few years ago plus we lose a few to accidents during training but alot more to suicide every year this coming from a guy in the military stationed at the place with the most suicides. And i would like to see the proof of a child sex trafficker, shouldnt be name calling and judging without proof.

Kage Uzumaki

truthfully....Zero Dark Thirty is better

MatthewBrown74m

you are not serious? we have lost a lot of brothers when we got this new guy in charge, and now he is sending troops to help that child sex trafficker.

zynjams

Wow, It is not hard to see your true feelings here,... who do you really cheer for in battle??? In the last 14 months, the body count has not risen... take a moment to let that sink in. We have not lost a soldier or Marine in combat. As we see Veteran's day arrive, let us give thanks for that and remember to stay vigilante.

Matt Mabry

It's a good movie. It's not a great movie.

Odd Thomas

I never understood the "it's so unrealistic" gauge of a movie. It is a movie not a documentary. People who in real life do the things being done in movies historically do not like watching movies that do those things... I don't see how that makes it a "bad" movie. If it was so realistic it would probably suck as a movie since like 90% of the time the real life version of events are actually just boring and/or hard to capture in cinema (Obviously there are exceptions to this). All in all, enjoyable movie IMHO. Better war movies out there, but this one was also different from the standard heavy hitters.

Bigbubbadave

You don't have the up-arrow key next to the 'z' on the keyboard?

Steve Colletti

It's all right to disagree with Vets, no group of people is right all the time. But calling them names just makes you sound dumb.

Richard Maurer

Didn’t you just call vets pussies in another post? I don’t think you actually know any

UNSC Saratoga

Charming.

Jason Chirevas

Weird, cause I know plenty of Vets who enjoyed this movie. Like most haters, its just lies and nonsense.

David RedEagle

Anti war, man you must be as dumb as they get.

David RedEagle

I know a lot of pussies err i mean vets. shit on this movie. I'm glad you reacted to this, yeah its Hollywood some what. but still, its a good MOVIE!

David RedEagle

+1 for Near Dark. Kind of Tarantino like, before Tarantino.

Larry Darrell

“Every person you meet gives you the evil eye”… that was one of the most chilling parts of this film for me. As they’re doing their work, there’s just a bunch of people staring and watching. Like it’s some kind of show.

Jeff Milcheck

Thank you for your service! And thank you for clarifying some inaccuracies… I did find it strange that it was just these 3 guys going in to defuse a bomb. Sure sometimes there where other guys around, but for the most part it seemed like they were just sending in a small 3 person unit to solve what seemed like a very big potential problem.

Jeff Milcheck

The terrorists had tortured Beckem and then stuffed him with explosives. I'm guessing to lure in Americans to blow them up. James couldn't blow up the kid.

Fireteam Joker

I spent more than a year in Iraq from 2004-05. The most unrealistic thing about this movie is how they go everywhere alone. No way would they travel by themselves. It felt like you left civilization. There was trash everywhere. There was no trash service. They dumped all their garbage right outside their houses. I fought in Fallujah in Nov 2004. They would rig doors with propane canisters. Sometimes they don't go off, but most of the time you only find out when you feel the searing hot flash. They daisy chain buried artillery shells along a street to kill as many of us as possible... Every single person you meet gives you the evil eye and you check everyone. EVERYONE for a cell phone... It's not really the explosion that kills you. The shock wave from the blast liquefies your insides. I had an RPG explode near me and it felt like being hit with a sledgehammer.

Fireteam Joker

That’s what it said when I googled for help… problem is, iPad doesn’t have a shift key.

Jeff Milcheck

I tried “practicing” in Notes app having turned on bullets. Try holding down Shift then press Return.

Dennis Shogren

Agree 100% that Near Dark is one of the best vampire movies ever. I wish it got more recognition, I have yet to see anyone react to it.

Richard Maurer

On a separate note, do any iPad users out there know how to hit enter to start a new paragraph and not have it send the damn message? That’s always frustrated me!

Jeff Milcheck

First off, I’m aware of the complaints of this film not being accurate to what it’s like being an IOD specialist. I’m not even sure what the issue is entirely. I guess that it was his reckless cavalier attitude? And that he didn’t play by the book? And I can understand and appreciate that… But that said, I still think this was a very well made movie across the board. Practically the suspense aspect of it. I think Kathryn Bigelow was deserving of the Best Director award. And I love that she beat out her ex-husband for the super overrated Avatar film. I remember watching the awards that year. And they seated her right in front of him. For some reason I found that funny. And definitely planned.

Jeff Milcheck

Fair enough, and to be honest, I had fun watching Hurt Locker once. I was in a group of vets, we were talking over each other laughing at the film. Number one phrase for the night was "bulls***!" Number two was "he just died" or something to that effect.

Michael Hawk

As a Marine veteran from '03 to '11 and doing 3 Iraqi deployments with CAR and purple heart, I can tell you that every deployment and experience was different. There was enough here to remind me of Iraq. Obviously the movie and story line was way too hollywood but to put things in perspective the experience my last deployment was more like a field trip compared to my first. When I first got there we were attacked just about every day dawn and dusk and some of my friend never came home. My last deployment we were attacked just a couple of times in 7 months and we played basketball and volleyball on base. I'm sure there are other veteran patreon members on here who can vouch. Anyway I enjoyed this movie when it first came out but now I feel like its one of those you only need to watch once. I read some former officers hated it because of how undisciplined and complacent they acted, which I can say was sort of accurate. And I know some former eod laugh at it because eod aint that easy.

joejud1017

I do NOT think this is anti-war to the vets, not. This is anti-war to those who were not there. OK? This is sympathy for those who were there.

Richard Bourne

EOD driving around solo without a convoy. Never happened. Reimer's character leaving the Entry Control Point solo...never would have happened. Pulling up on the wires of the chained bombs...cool shot...stupid as f***. People tend react negativeĺy to dumb things that can get them killed, and HL is full of that. EOD having stacked specialties...unlikely. And so on and so forth...I mean, holy crap they are wearing the wrong rank. A freshly trained private could pull this movie apart. Iraq War veterans were ambivalent during the war, do you still think they hate this film because it's anti-war? Really? You can excuse all the falsehoods you can't recognize anyway as the "lie to get to the truth," but the lies stack up for us and we won't.

Michael Hawk

I can't wait for her reaction to The Best Years of Our Lives. Great movie, and she'll love it. I'm sure that the 3 love stories in it won't influence her opinion at all. 😉

Bill Hayden

This movie is not accurate. At all. I don’t know any Afghanistan or Iraq veterans who like this movie. The worst part is that Kathryn Bigelow had technical advisors straight from the Army and EOD and she completely blew them off. Rumor has it that when the advisors saw the movie at the premiere they were enraged and told Kathryn they would never work for her or watch any of her movies again

UNSC Saratoga

watched this movie for the first time while aboard a really long flight...it stuck with me

JL_83

Yea zero dark thirty is an incredible film! Cassie you need to put that on your list asap!!

brooke atkins

It's hard to believe that the same director made the original POINT BREAK especially when you compare the tonal differences, but the technical elements are present in both films. Look at the incredible foot chase in POINT BREAK as well as how the a lot of the action sequences are staged and you'll see many similarities. Bigelow is the real deal.

Matt Rose

I agree ZERO DARK THIRTY was a much better movie and a story that needed to be told. POINT BREAK, OMG the 1991 original with Keanu Reeves, Patrick Swayze, and even Gary Busey in their prime, Wow. OK, I had no idea and am eating a bit of crow on that. Excellent movie.

Richard Bourne

They don't even have the correct rank on

Eric Wallace

As I said in a post above yours, ZD30 is 10x the movie that THE HURT LOCKER is.

Matt Rose

I've heard that from other veterans as well.

Matt Rose

same director, but zero dark thirty is required viewing for you and carly

christopher b swanson

Movie is gone. Technical glitch?

Robert da Spruce

In the same boat. I remember thinking it was well shot but none of the plot details stand out in my memory except for the very end.

Patrick Flanagan

Jeremy Renner is awesome, as an actor and a person. No this is not a feel good movie, this is an anti-war movie, specifically anti-US- invasion of Iraq movie. I partically blame this invasion on the media after Operation Desert Storm which was a stunning success. I had a very close friend who was a Marine and in the thick of it. The US main stream media then started this criticism that the job was not finished, that Saddam Hussein (BTW Sadam with one d is an insult and Bush 41 used to do that on purpose, I had an Arab friend informing me on that) which was NEVER the goal and was NEVER approved by the UN. If anything the media pushed his son GW Bush 43 to then do that.

Richard Bourne

I put this movie in the 'very good' category: it's incredible from a technical perspective and extremely intense but the film lacks a certain something to really make it all work. It's hard to connect to the film. Kathryn Bigelow is an incredible director though. She also did ZERO DARK THIRTY which is, in my opinion, 10x the film that this one is. She also did POINT BREAK, STRANGE DAYS, and NEAR DARK, one of the best vampire films ever made.

Matt Rose

As veteran from the 2009 to 2013 period, its also crazy inaccurate and full of fantasy. Good movie but not the real deal.

Eric Wallace

I know I have seen this before, but I do not remember anything about it.

Brian McGovern