Home of the Brave (2006) Review

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(More customer reviews)Mere weeks away from learning that their unit has received orders to go home from Iraq, various soldiers go on a humanitarian mission and run into an ambush. Chaos ensues, and all receive an injury in one way, shape, or form. Weeks later they are all in Spokane, Washington and the four main characters (Vanessa - Jessica Biel, Will - Samuel L. Jackson, Jamal - Fiddy, and Tommy - Brian Presely) deal with piecing their lives together while many hate the war, and by proxy, hold that hatred against the soldiers involved in it. The rest is just a person-by-person experience of individuals coping with semi-related post-war lives.
Home of the Brave is controversial in that it's difficult for a movie-maker to relay a message that's very positive of the military life or the struggles of a soldier - and keep a job in Hollywood - but it's clear that the creators of this movie didn't even remotely try. They paint a bleak picture of abandoned, abused, and shell-shocked soldiers who drink uncontrollably, can't control their anger, and can't relate to the "civilian life" outside of the foreign world of the military. In that sense, Home of the Brave reminded me in many ways of The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien. Pain often accompanies scars, but what doesn't always coincide mentally, however, is the visibility of those same scars. Outward appearances don't always convey the truth of trauma or mental difficulties.
With all that said, however, as a former soldier and family member of several generations of soldiers, I can say unequivocally that the image conveyed is hazy to say the least. To be more accurate, it's slanted politically, with hints and outright displays of ignorant anti-war rhetoric, and reeks of the same type of elitist comments made by John Kerry about the correlation between being in the military and a lack of intelligence or education.
While the biased, hyper-focus of the movie is on the troubled few, what's left out is the great majority who deal with their troubles without a comment or complaint. Therein exists the truism of bravery, courage, honor, and sacrifice of the majority, and perhaps it would do the Hollywood folks a bit of good to concentrate a little more on those stories, because I've heard several and I'm sure there are countless more.

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When a humanitarian mission in Iraq is derailed by an explosive ambush, a small band of American soldiers find themselves fighting for their lives.

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The Hurt Locker (2009) Review

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(More customer reviews)The movie opens with the quote - "the rush of battle is often a potent and lethal addiction, for war is a drug" (a modern paraphrase of Churchill's older and more famous maxim - "there is nothing more exhilarating than to be shot at without result")
This is a thriller of a movie about a U.S. Army bomb disposal unit in Iraq and their daily grind in dealing with the IEDs and insurgents there.
This movie does have several stars - but Ralph Fiennes, Guy Pierce, and Evangeline Lilly all have fairly small roles. Blink, and you'll miss them. Their presence in this movie is more a testament to director/producer Kathryn Bigelow's status in the entertainment industry than anything else.
Jeremy Renner is Sergeant James, a bomb tech. Unlike his affable predecessor, he is a wild man. He seems not only indifferent to the dangers of his job, he absolutely revels in the dangers. It is the ultimate in thrill seeking behavior, getting that dopamine surge in his brain. Near the end of the movie, Sgt. James gets accused of being an adrenaline junkie, but we know now that the neurochemical at work here is dopamine.Bomb disposal is not just a job for him, but his passion, his addiction, his reason for being in the Army.
Renner's character ends up like a cross between Elmer Fudd, with his perpetually placid and slightly befuddled gaze, and Bugs Bunny, with his wile and lust for excitement and danger.
His two partners in the unit, Sgt. Sanborn and Specialist Eldridge, who have to cover him and just want to survive their tour of duty, don't know quite how to deal with his determination to confront danger. One wonders at why Sgt. James puts himself in danger, why he takes the extra risks to defuse a bomb when detonating it would do.The scene that explains it all is when Sgt. James returns home to America one day and we see him doing the mundane chores of life as a civilian, cleaning out the rain gutters, cleaning up the kitchen, shopping with his wife and baby at the grocery store. As he stares at an entire wall full of colorful cereal boxes stacked along a grocery store aisle, a look of utter blankness, boredom, and despair fills his face.....nope, not for him, this dull life as a civilian....
The movie's storyline is a series of daily missions, almost like a documentary or a TV series, each episode standing alone and yet building upon previous episodes, each one presenting a new danger, a new challenge, another piece of the puzzle that is the war in Iraq.
What makes this movie work is the recreation of Iraq in this movie - it was filmed in Jordan with local Iraqi expatriates. We feel the oppressive tension of the whole country, of not knowing who the bad guys are and where the next bomb or bullet is going to come from.We feel the fear and uncertainty of the American soldiers, caught between their desire to be the good guys and wanting to make nice with the local Iraqis, while constantly needing to remain vigilant and suspicious, never knowing who is a good Iraqi, and who deserves to get shot. We feel the bewilderment and resentment of the local Iraqis, who get pushed around at every turn by the American soldiers.
Unlike so many other recent Iraq war movies, this movie makes no political statements, there is no right or wrong here. These are just men at work, doing a dangerous and dirty job, and these guys are darn good at what they do for their country, whatever the reasons are that they are doing it.


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War is a drug. Nobody knows that better than Staff Sergeant James, head of an elite squad of soldiers tasked with disarming bombs in the heat of combat. To do this nerve-shredding job, it\'s not enough to be the best: you have to thrive in a zone where the margin of error is zero, think as diabolically as a bomb-maker, and somehow survive with your body and soul intact. Powerfully realistic, action-packed, unrelenting and intense, The Hurt Locker has been hailed by critics as "an adrenaline-soaked tour de force" (A.O. Scott, The New York Times) and "one of the great war movies." (Richard Corliss, Time)

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