As The Hurt Locker comes to Blu-ray and DVD, Xtra-visions Marshall Julius examines Hollywood's response to the War on Terror.
Beyond the human and financial cost, America's War on Terror has been a public relations disaster for the faltering Super Power and, unfortunately for us, its allies. With worldwide public opinion largely opposed to the conflict in Iraq, widely regarded an uncontrollable, mismanaged disaster, Hollywood has, naturally, made several dramas out of the crisis.
Rather than waiting for the war to end though, as they did with Vietnam, thereby gaining some perspective before wading in with their two cents, the largely liberal filmmaking community has used the screen to vent multiple accusatory views, setting their sights on everything from the politicians who nurtured the war in Iraq, to the dehumanised soldiers who fight it.
Michael Moore's scathing documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 came in 2004, just a year after the invasion of Iraq, back in the days when most Americans considered it unpatriotic not to support the war. Just two years later though, when popular opinion finally caught up with Moore, Hollywood's war on the War on Terror began in earnest.
First came writer/director Irwin Winkler's Home of the Brave, starring Samuel L. Jackson, detailing the physical and psychological injuries suffered by four American soldiers in Iraq. The floodgates having opened, 2007 saw a tidal wave of cinematic protest, beginning with Paul Haggis's In the Valley of Elah, based on real events, and starring Tommy Lee Jones as a war veteran searching for his son who, having recently returned from Iraq, mysteriously disappears. A tale of prisoner abuse and post-traumatic stress disorder, though its heart was in the right place, critics regarded the film as rather a mess, and lacking emotional punch.
Also in 2007, Brian De Palma's Redacted told another true tale, this time about American soldiers who rape a 15 year-old Iraqi girl and murder her family. In the case of this, and many other War on Terror movies, it was America's own troops who were the bad guys - not the terrorists. Stressing that his film was less an attack on the troops than it was an exploration of how war puts men in impossible situations, DePalma anticipated, correctly, that "...the right wing is gonna come at this film. I mean, I've done something that just can't be done. You can't ever say anything critical of the troops."
A brisk, insightful drama from director Robert Redford, Lions For Lambs (2007) examined various American perspectives on the War on Terror, how it was doing at the time, where it was going and the lives and careers it has shaped since it began. Exploring the roles of education, youth, politics and the media in today's post 9/11 United States, it's a wordy, informational film that isn't long enough to become gruelling.
"Everyone's point of view on the issues is represented," said the director, "whether you like it or not. I'm worried about my country," continued Redford at a time when the junior Bush was still Commander-on-Chief. "I'm a little bit in mourning, for the great things I've known in my life. I've lived through a lot of events: WW2, McCarthyism, the assassination of the President and more, but I've never seen my country in as bad a shape as it is now, particularly how we're perceived by the world. What one administration could do to trash so many categories makes me sad, it breaks my heart, but what are we gonna do about it? The only thing I can do is create a drama that puts certain things out there for people to think about, ‘cos if we don't get involved, somehow, some way, it will continue."
From South African director Gavin Hood, 2007's Rendition was, as the title suggests, an emotional indictment of the U.S. government's policy of extraordinary rendition. At a time when anyone even remotely suspected of wrongdoing was being snatched and imprisoned, without rights, at the detention centre in Guantanamo Bay, the movie follows American wife Reese Witherspoon's hunt for her missing, innocent Egyptian husband.
Finally in 2007, Peter Berg's The Kingdom starred Jamie Foxx and Jennifer Garner as agents investigating the bombing of an American facility in Saudi Arabia. Far from accepting the notion that Americans have the right to force their way into any country and fix its problems, it suggested the harder the US tries to fix things, the bigger the mess they create.
What The Kingdom, Redacted and all these other movies have in common is that, in the War on Terror, it's the Americans, not the terrorists, who we have to watch out for. Which might be overstating or oversimplifying things just a touch, but it perfectly illustrates how conflicted people felt and continue to feel about the War on Terror. Something else these movies have in common is that none did terribly well at the box office, either.
Yet late last year Hollywood did something amazing. It made a movie set during the Iraq war that didn't lecture liberal politics or depict American troops as psychopaths. What's more, it was a hit with audiences, too. For while the War on Terror is a ceaseless horror and most people agree it's been handled rather less than competently, there's another truth out there, that the majority of the troops are decent, terrified, and ours, or America's, our sons and our brothers, and we just want them to come home safely. How men in peril survive, then, is the theme of The Hurt Locker, probably the best Iraqi war film to date, and arguably one of the greatest war movies ever made – period. Finally a film that the left and the right can watch together in peace.
Directed by Kathryn Bigelow, best know previously for Near Dark and Point Break, The Hurt Locker chronicles an elite squad of bomb techs in a sweltering Baghdad. Written by journalist and screenwriter Mark Boal, based on his embed with an Explosive Ordinance Disposal (EOD) team in Iraq in 2004, this eye witness account examines not only the psychology of a volunteer army, but the warrior who is drawn to combat like a moth to a flame. Available now on Blu-ray and DVD from Xtra-vision, The Hurt Locker is a remarkable piece of work, and entertaining with it.
Speaking at The Hurt Locker's world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, Bigelow stated that "...Fear has a bad reputation, but I think that's ill-deserved. Fear is clarifying. It forces you to put important things first and discount the trivial. When Mark Boal, the writer, came back from a reporting trip to Iraq, he told me stories about men in the Army who disarm bombs in the heat of combat – obviously, an elite job with a high mortality rate. When he mentioned that they are extremely vulnerable and use little more than a pair of pliers to disarm a bomb that can kill for 300 metres, I was shocked. When I learned that these men volunteer for this dangerous work, and often grow so fond of it that they can imagine doing nothing else, I knew I had found my next film."
Where exactly the next big Iraq movie stands politically remains to be seen, an action thriller from British director Paul Greengrass called Green Zone, set in Baghdad, starring Matt Damon and due out in cinemas early next year. And there'll be more, lots more, representing every side of the story and every divergent opinion, before the War on Terror is resolved. If, in fact, it ever is. Let's just cross our fingers and hope for a happy ending.