"The Hurt Locker" new feature film on EOD/bomb squad GIs in Iraq

[Smirnoff123]

I saw this movie a few days ago, I really enjoyed it; though I did find a few parts a little dull.

 

[Journeyman]

I enjoyed it as well.....within the bounds of "cinema" versus "reality"

-- although the bit with him running amok, alone, in down town Baghdad    ri-iiight

 

[Smirnoff123]

-- although the bit with him running amok, alone, in down town Baghdad    ri-iiight

Yes, I found that pretty far-fetched as well

 

[Mehlenbacher89]

Heh, I just finished watching it, and coincidentally this was one of the first thread sI spotted upon logging in. I really enjoyed it. You don't see many modern war movies these days, let alone many from the EOD team standpoint.

 

[Greymatters]

Never heard of it advertised before, thanks for the reviews...

Edit - And I agree with Roy Harding's post, members should fell free to PM each other the download information, but shouldn't post it to the thread...

 

[dustinm]

Edit - And I agree with Roy Harding's post, members should fell free to PM each other the download information, but shouldn't post it to the thread...

I would be wary of even PMing the information. In the legal world (as far as I understand), any communication between your computer and the Milnet.ca servers (posting and PMing being the big two) is considered "in the open" and available for scrutiny by lawyers if it were to be met with a court order.

Back on topic: are there any other "bomb squad" or EOD/IEDD movies like this out there? A quick Google search turned up nothing but references to this movie.

 

[Greymatters]

I would be wary of even PMing the information. In the legal world (as far as I understand), any communication between your computer and the Milnet.ca servers (posting and PMing being the big two) is considered "in the open" and available for scrutiny by lawyers if it were to be met with a court order.

Either way, the idea is to prevent the impression that Milnet.ca approves of the activity by not allowing the information to be posted in open forums...

Also back on topic; there have been a couple EOD-related thrillers out there, but I dont recall any that focused on a specific EOD team as the main focus of the story...

 

[1feral1]

I seen this flick on V-Australia somewhere between Australia and Los Angles.

As much as its just a movie, I did appreciate the region, buildings, mosques and overall layout. Definaltly brought back some memories, some not so pleasant.

I knew some US guys at TF Troy (they know who they are) who did this for real day in - day out. Hollywood will never get it right. I was however entertained by this movie, and I am happy to see films come out about 'my' war.

Later read that it was filmed in Jordan.

OWDU

 

[Infanteer]

I never knew EOD teams rolled alone and were also trained as snipers....

Movie was brutal; I liked Generation Kill better.

 

[xena]

Yeah, I wondered about the sniping bit too (cuz I was a clerk - what the heck do I know about EOD stuff?), and asked about it on a different forum, and the answer I got was that EOD types get trained to use the Barret to distance detonate munitions when it was too dangerous to approach.  I guess it'd be simpler to detonate something like unexploded cluster bomblets with a Barrett than try to walk up and fiddle with them.

That's the answer I got anyway.

I liked the movie.  Yeah, I know there were huge parts that were unrealistic, and I didn't let it bother me.  I liked the bit where he's following a wire and comes to a point where it spreads out in a bunch of different directions, and finds that he's surrounded by warheads, and says nothing but a rather understated "Oh boy."

 

[Dean22]

I never knew EOD teams rolled alone and were also trained as snipers....

Movie was brutal; I liked Generation Kill better.

If you listened in the movie you would hear that the Team Leader was fully qualified on the weapon and he had been in Intelligence for 7 years.

As for the "ranger" I am not sure it takes much qualification to hold a telescope and be a spotter.

 

[1feral1]

If you listened in the movie you would hear that the Team Leader was fully qualified on the weapon and he had been in Intelligence for 7 years.

As for the "ranger" I am not sure it takes much qualification to hold a telescope and be a spotter.

Thats an unnecessary stab at someone who was just commenting on the reality of Hollywood.

Its just a movie and quite frankly far (very far) from reality.

I don't know who you think you are, or where you think you've been, but as a PTE (R), I would say no where, and in 'reality', your attitude sucks.

Kind regards,

OWDU

 

[Journeyman]

If you listened in the movie you would hear that the Team Leader was fully qualified on the weapon and he had been in Intelligence for 7 years.

As for the "ranger" I am not sure it takes much qualification to hold a telescope and be a spotter.

How many threads now have you been told to "stay in your lane"?

Having once -upon-a-time qualified on a weapon prior to coming into EOD does not mean he'd have the weapon or use it.

His number 2 is a "Spotter" not a "ranger." And a sniper team actually takes a fair bit of "qualification."

And while I'm sure there's a massive number of Intelligence Snipers in your XBox world, there aren't in mine.

Please.......stop posting about shit you know absolutely nothing about.

 

[Kat Stevens]

How many threads now have you been told to "stay in your lane"?

Having once -upon-a-time qualified on a weapon prior to coming into EOD does not mean he'd have the weapon or use it.

His number 2 is a "Spotter" not a "ranger." And a sniper team actually takes a fair bit of "qualification."

And while I'm sure there's a massive number of Intelligence Snipers in your XBox world, there aren't in mine.

Please.......stop posting about shit you know absolutely nothing about.

Polite round of golf clapping.  "Good shot old boy, hole in one, eh wot?"

 

[Man_Bear_Pig]

If you listened in the movie you would hear that the Team Leader was fully qualified on the weapon and he had been in Intelligence for 7 years.

As for the "ranger" I am not sure it takes much qualification to hold a telescope and be a spotter.

LOL too true what a funny statement; another thing being he was wearing a CIB which is only awarded to infantry who take and return fire  along with an EOD badge, which is not done. Another thing they were wearing their skill badges in country and when you arrive in Kuwait they tell you take that crap off.

This movie had me excited for about thirty seconds and that is only because of word of mouth.  From my time in the country of Iraq I have never seen EOD roam around in a 3 man truck taking on every little mission possible. My experience they were actually an 1-2 hours late after the call up. Oh the memories......  :'( 

I can tell you that EOD is allowed to attend sniper school though only SOTIC though I have actually never met a single one who attends and have first hand family member who is a EOD SGT Major and he explained they rarely send anyone and the reason to be sent is for unexploded ordnance.

As for the spotter it was retarded, I was in amazement is the remaining to SAS members sat hopeless and on the ground as the two EOD got up with out calling in any 'dope' and fired away. I myself am a sniper and I wish I was that good.

It was a mistake purchasing this movie for my I POD and they continue to prove movies about the Iraq and Afghanistan deployments will never be made correctly.

Take care MBP

 

[blacktriangle]

It was pretty much a comedy movie in my eyes...I sure was laughing.

The sniper part, going out to try to track down that kid, getting one of his men almost kidnapped by insurgents, and then...going back again. My girlfriend liked it at least...
hoooorah

 

[Franko]

I myself am a sniper and I wish I was that good.

So sniper or Ranger? I'm calling you out as a Walt.



If your not....prove me wrong for all to see. Answer these easy questions:

1. Are you a tab ranger or a scroll ranger?

2. What was your Ranger class number?

3. What phase of the school did you like the most or least, and why?

4. Where did you go to Ranger school, Ft. Bragg or Ft. Benning ?

5. Who was your Ranger buddy in the school (optional)

6. What Ranger Unit have you belonged to?


I've grown tired of hearing your exploits.

 

[The Bread Guy]

This, from the Daily Beast, shared for fair use and research purposes:

Moments before Oscar ballots are due, The Hurt Locker has gone from awards darling to awards disaster. Nicole LaPorte reports on nasty emails, an ostracized producer, and an ill-timed story.

When director Kathryn Bigelow first heard that Nicolas Chartier, the Frenchman who financed and produced her film, The Hurt Locker, had sent out emails last week urging members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to vote for Hurt Locker and "not a 500M film"' (i.e., Avatar), the first thing she did was pick up the phone and call Jon Landau, who produced Avatar, to express her horror.

"Kathryn and Jon's relationship goes back a long time, and everyone understands that we wish each other well," Hurt Locker screenwriter Mark Boal told The Daily Beast. "All sides have been extremely supportive of each other… Kathryn was shocked and appalled and embarrassed by Nick's poor judgment, and condemned it."

In the wake of The Hurt Locker controversy, one publicist claimed that some members of the Academy are demanding new ballots in order to change their vote.

And so a bomb was detonated in what has suddenly become a very nasty Oscar battlefield.

Until now, the campaign leading up to this weekend's Academy Awards had been relatively low-key and peaceable, at least by Hollywood standards. Bigelow and James Cameron (her ex-husband), who are perceived to be neck in neck in the race for Best Picture, have been blowing kisses at each other every opportunity they get. Inglourious Basterds' writer-director Quentin Tarantino has also been spreading the love (he endorsed Bigelow on Larry King Live). Even Harvey Weinstein, normally a bête noir this time of year, has kept his hijinks to a relative minimum. Although he's been pumping Basterds like crazy, his rallying is nothing compared to the smear campaigns he was accused of back in the day, when he muscled Shakespeare in Love to Oscar gold by allegedly bad-mouthing Saving Private Ryan.

Chartier's emails—which were first reported by Los Angeles Times Oscar blogger Pete Hammond, and which are a violation of Academy rules—was just the first scandal for Hurt Locker, which until now, was enjoying a near-perfect run. To this point, Bigelow, who is expected to be the first woman to win a Best Director Oscar, is the belle of the Hollywood ball. Her movie is regarded as the deserving David facing a Goliath (Cameron), who has already had his share of Oscar spoils.

On Friday, another blow came in the form of a front-page Los Angeles Times story—"The Hurt Locker Sets Off Conflict"—saying that several soldiers and Army veterans found the film an inaccurate representation of combat, and that the U.S. government had pulled its funding of the film after seeing the script.

Given that The Hurt Locker was released in theaters last summer (a more likely time for critics to come out of the woodwork) and that the due date for Oscar ballots was four days after the story ran, one Oscar consultant—who has nothing to do with Hurt Locker— called the article "Smear 101." (As TheWrap.com's Steve Pond has pointed out, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and the Associated Press have all run stories about soldiers' and veterans' reactions, concluding that the majority of them approved of the film. The Daily Beast also featured a story about a real-life Marine EOD soldier who thought the movie captured his experience.)

At this point, most voters have already cast their ballots, thus the effect of the Times' revelations is minimized. However, one publicist claimed that some members of the Academy were demanding new ballots in order to change their vote.

According to Academy spokesperson Leslie Unger, once a vote has been sent in, there is no way to change it or receive a new ballot. If voters want to change their selections before they've sent in their ballot, they must initialize the change.

Behind the scenes, things are even uglier. Chartier, who was never cozy with his Hurt Locker comrades, has now been essentially tossed off the bus. Although he quickly issued an apology for his "extremely inappropriate" emails when the story first broke, the damage has been done. Not only is Chartier expected to be reprimanded by the Academy, which will make its decision on March 2 (most likely, he will be docked tickets to the Oscar ceremony), but it's unlikely that his fellow filmmakers will be offering him a plus-one.

"Everyone understands that Nic bears the responsibility for his mistake 100 percent on his own shoulders," Boal said.

A French sales agent who came to Hurt Locker's rescue when no one else would finance a movie about Iraq with no stars—Chartier put up the film's $15 million budget—Chartier was almost immediately ostracized from the production, and came close to not getting a producer credit. (When the Producers Guild of America, which limits the number of producers on an Oscar-nominated film to three, did not initially grant him credit, he appealed the decision and won. Contrary to reports, neither Boal nor the other producers wrote a letter on his behalf.) Described as a "reactive" personality prone to fits of anger, and who, at one point or another, tried to fire Boal, the film's accountant, line producer, and even the travel agent, Chartier was banned from The Hurt Locker set.

"It was a hard movie to get made," Boal said. "It was a challenging shoot, and it's the nature of those things that tempers can flare and strong disagreements can arise. And Nic was eventually asked not to come back to the set."

Chartier did not respond to voice message left at his office by The Daily Beast.

As for the Times story, Boal said, "I was disappointed in the reporting and handling of the story. It seemed like it was stating the obvious with a sense of discovery."

Besides the timing of the story, there were omissions, according to sources who worked on The Hurt Locker's publicity campaign. For example, the story quotes Paul Rieckhoff, the executive director and founder of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, saying, "We are not cowboys. We are not reckless."

Yet it is not reported that besides being an Army veteran, Rieckhoff is a Hollywood producer with his own films in the works. According to IMDb.com, Rieckhoff is a producer on nearly half a dozen war documentaries. Newsweek also recently published a piece, this one penned by Rieckhoff, that does not mention his role as a filmmaker.

In response, Nancy Sullivan, a Los Angeles Times spokesperson, wrote in an email: "Paul Rieckhoff was quoted in the story as the director of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, which is the source of his authority on the topic."

Boal said of Rieckhoff: "I think he's an articulate advocate for his point of view, and now he has a foot in Hollywood. I look forward to seeing his work as a filmmaker."

Even with this last-minute round of implosions, however, this year's Oscar campaign remains one of history's more claw-less. The Hurt Locker's troubles are nothing compared to what A Beautiful Mind faced in 2002, when every day seemingly brought a new slur against schizophrenic mathematician John Nash, the subject of the film. Or, in 1999, when Miramax was charged with the whisper campaign against Saving Private Ryan.

The closest this brouhaha comes to matching is, in 2004, when DreamWorks took out ads in the trades that quoted critics supporting actress Shohreh Aghdashloo in House of Sand in Fog over Renee Zellweger in Miramax's Cold Mountain.

Though that ploy proved ineffective— Zellweger won. Right now, The Hurt Locker camp is hoping history repeats itself.

 

[MikeL]

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/01/essay-15/

BAGHDAD — I long ago learned not to discuss war movies with soldiers. They tend to be detail-oriented and obsessed with authenticity. They frequently dismiss well-made, thought-provoking films because of some minor detail — the scope on a rifle is wrong, or the markings on a vehicle incorrect.

Last summer, I began to see rave reviews of “The Hurt Locker,” a movie about the Iraq war by Kathryn Bigelow. After a string of Iraq-related Hollywood flops, reviewers said this was the movie that finally brought home the reality and horror of Iraq. Soon I began to get e-mail from friends back in the states who loved the movie for its “realistic depiction” of the war. I’ve worked in Iraq over a six-year period, and they wanted to know what I thought.

Though I’m back in Iraq now, I put off seeing the movie, partly because I felt no need to be disturbed by memories that its graphic images would surely raise. But I mentioned the movie to a few soldiers. Predictably, none liked it. A group from the 2nd Infantry Division laughed uproariously, recalling the scene where a blood-soaked bullet jams a massive .50-caliber rifle. “A fifty cal? Blood would just lubricate it!”

Another soldier: “Remember the scene where the dude is running alone through Baghdad? Ridiculous!”

Finally, a few nights ago, I sat down to see “The Hurt Locker” for myself.

This time, the soldiers were right. The film is a collection of scenes that are completely implausible — wrong in almost every respect. This time, it’s not just minor details that are wrong.

If there is one rule with the military, it is that there is strength in numbers. No one soldier, no one vehicle, goes out alone. Ever. Four vehicles and a 20-man squad is the minimum that I have worked with in Iraq. A lone Humvee would not be allowed to clear the gate at any base in Iraq.

Yet, in scene after scene, the bomb disposal team, led by Staff Sgt. William James, appears to be fighting the war alone. They drive the streets of Baghdad, a three-man team in a lonely Humvee, with no back up. They single-handedly clear buildings, drive desert roads alone with no air cover and confront a truckload of potential enemy fighters — who turn out to be bizarre and incompetent British mercenaries. When the British are killed, the American explosive technicians turn out to be expert snipers and spotters as well.

In one sequence, Sergeant James sneaks away to a house he believes to be an insurgent base. Realizing he is mistaken, he then runs alone for what appears to be several miles through the labyrinthine streets of Baghdad to return to his base. Strangely, he encounters no U.S. checkpoints on the streets, though they were numerous in that period. And he returns, as if by magic, unscathed.

In 2004, with the insurgency in full swing, the chances of a U.S. soldier running through the streets of Baghdad and making it back to base were approximately zero.

The movie’s denouement — the explosive ordnance disposal (E.O.D.) team responds to a massive truck bomb in the Green Zone — is so completely wrong in every respect that it borders on farce. Insurgents did not operate freely in the Green Zone. They would never have kidnapped a soldier in an area with thousands of U.S. troops. And they would never have hung around an active investigation scene with their weapons. No American E.O.D. team in existence (or any other three-man squad) would go charging alone down dark alleyways when there are hundreds of infantrymen at hand.

These are mere details compared to the way Sergeant James repeatedly swaggers up to bombs. As Mark Boal, the screenwriter, well knows, many I.E.D.’s in Iraq are remotely detonated. Mr. Boal actually embedded with an E.O.D. team in Iraq, so he knows the chances of recklessly approaching even a single command-detonated bomb and surviving are quite small. Yet we are made to believe that Sergeant James has disabled over 800 bombs in this reckless, cowboy-like fashion.

More disturbing and implausible yet is the way the protagonist repeatedly endangers the lives of his team members. The soldiers I have worked with over the years are like brothers to one another. Never have I seen stronger bonds between men. Any soldier who routinely endangers his own life or those of his squad members would not be punched, as the movie’s star is in one scene. He would be demoted and kicked out of his unit.

“Our No. 1 job is protection of people and property,” said Rob Wagner, an E.O.D. team chief based in Diyala Province. “If we do our job the way it’s done in the movie, we would get people killed.”

Lt.j.g. Glenn Moffat, another member of the team, added, “We have to be level-headed and mature, to think things through — the opposite of the how it’s done in the movie.”

One of the greatest disservices of “The Hurt Locker” is the impression that soldiers in Iraq were masters of their destinies. If they snipped the right wire, made the right shot, cleared the right room, they would stay alive. In fact, the opposite was true. Certainly there were firefights, but the vast majority of U.S. deaths were from I.E.D.’s.

This is what was so absolutely terrifying about the war. A faceless enemy was catastrophically destroying U.S. vehicles every day with I.E.D.’s (and I can assure you the enemy did not stand in the open, as per several scenes in the movie). Regardless of your training, if you were in that vehicle when the button got pressed, you were dead.

I’ve covered a number of conflicts and Iraq was the least romantic, the one that looked the least like the war movies I grew up on. Yet Ms. Bigelow pulls one out for Hollywood. While many have praised the movie as anti-war, I believe — in a counter-intuitive way — that it glamorizes war. The Steely-Nerved-Protagonist Who Has Seen Too Much kills the bad guys in an action-packed setting and eventually signs up for more. His hard-drinking, P.T.S.D.-ravaged character becomes that much more romantic for his flaws.

I understand the argument that Ms. Bigelow and her team should be applauded for tackling certain issues and bringing the war home to Americans. Yet with so many scenes and details untrue, the actual war in Iraq becomes merely a dramatic jumping off point for the filmmakers.

E.O.D. teams are highly specialized. They do not fire sniper rifles, clear buildings full of insurgents, single-handedly engage a squad of enemy combatants or drive the streets of Iraq alone. What they do in reality is amazing enough: one of the most nerve-wracking and dangerous jobs on earth. It is done a disservice by this degree of dramatization.

When a filmmaker gets that many details wrong, it’s hard to believe she got the war right. “The Hurt Locker” is not a drama about a make-believe event. This is a movie about an ongoing war that has affected millions, in which 100,000 Americans are still serving. It deserves a minimal degree of historical accuracy and attention to detail.

 

[caocao]

That movie sucked big time...might be entertaining to someone with no military background.  Thank god I didn't pay to go see it in theatre!