Logan Blain

The Hurt Locker in Comparison to Restrepo

        After watching a Hollywood film about war and then seeing one documentary that was completely raw, it made me question what was accurate in the Hollywood film. While watching the documentary film Restrepo I was constantly comparing and contrasting the actuality of Restrepo to The Hurt Locker. One of the first things I noticed was the cohesiveness of the men on post at Restrepo compared to the group of men in The Hurt Locker. In the Restrepo group they always stick together, and there is an overall sense of friendship within the fleet. Another aspect of Restrepo that I saw that was not depicted in The Hurt Locker is the troops' role in negotiating with the locals. Overall, I see The Hurt Locker as more of a Hollywood attraction more than it is an accurate depiction of war in Afghanistan.

       In Restrepo, all of the men are cohesive in that they do not fight, they all get along and they all function well together. In The Hurt Locker James does his own thing and doesn't have any regard for Sanborn and Eldridge. The way that James does everything his own way against orders would be an absurd idea in the context of Restrepo. All of the men follow orders and work together as a team. No one man stands out and tries to be the hero. Richard Allen Smith states that “what is truly disrespectful of service members was the portrayal of the EOD team members as undisciplined, boozing, fighting children with no discipline or respect for their chain of command.” In my previous blog post I addressed the question that is “Is The Hurt Locker a Thriller or a Moralization?”. Richard Allen Smith states that “in fact, most of the scenes-In The Hurt Locker- rely on oddly and unrealistically contrived situations to induce a stressful reaction from the audience." Smith states that “The Hurt Locker exaggerates and creates unrealistic situations to induce a certain emotion from the film.” This is also apparent when you compare it to Restrepo. None of the stressful and emotionally stimulating scenes in Restrepo are due to a heroic act, like James's. The emotionally stimulating parts of Restrepo are real and are in no way exaggerated.

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        Restrepo, in my opinion, combines many different aspects of war within the film and doesn't limit itself to combat. Although the Korengal Valley is a heavy-combat area, this is not the only thing the movie focuses on. One aspect of the documentary that shocked me was how much the American soldiers negotiated and communicated with the indigenous people. I have never seen this aspect of war depicted in any war movie I have ever seen. It is intriguing how the locals react to the things that the Americans do. When the Americans kill the seriously injured cow the locals want financial compensation for it. Although this roused tension between the Americans and the Afghanistan elders, the Americans showed their respect by attending the traditional shura meetings held by the elders. One of the main purposes for the deployment of troops into the Korengal Valley was to facilitate negotiations with the indigenous people and I really liked seeing this side of war. On the other hand, The Hurt Locker shows no negotiation with the locals. Unless you consider threatening a form of negotiation, then the Americans in this movie do not negotiate with the locals. Other than James interacting with the young boy who sells DVDs, the Americans do not interact or even attempt to negotiate with the locals. The only interaction is in terms of suspicion of IEDs.

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        After watching Restrepo, I quickly realized that the notion of what I thought war was like was far from true. I am glad that Restrepo was filmed and that it is a raw documentary. I believe that all of the public should see this film to correct their twisted notions of what war is like. Hollywood is responsible for the common misconceptions including the idea that war is all about combat, and how the men act and interact with each other. The Hurt Locker is narrow in its focus, it only focuses on the combat aspect of war when Restrepo reveals to us that combat is not the only aspect of war. The Hurt Locker depiected the men's off-time as a time to get wasted and act roudy. Restrepo proves to us that this is not the case at all. In their off time the men bond with each other, play music, dance or play games, all of these very non-violent actions. Restrepo is an imformitive and revealing piece of information that shows us what is true about war. 

Logan Blain

The Hurt Locker: Thriller or Moralization?

The film The Hurt Locker is a movie that focuses on combat in Iraq and more specifically on explosives. Many actual soldiers disagree with this movie and claim that it is not accurate, but this is to be expected from a Hollywood production. To a viewer who has never experienced war first-hand this movie is both thrilling and informative. It is hard to say how accurate the movie is in terms of what it was really like in Iraq because Hollywood has to make the movie interesting to make money, but I believe there are many aspects of the movie that are true in war. This movie is very suspenseful but I would think that it is suspenseful not knowing if the merchant behind the vendor has a detonator or not. There are many times in the movie where you are on the edge of your seat anticipating what’s going to happen next, which is thrilling yet true in the context of the film. Putting yourself in the shoes of the bomb squad, any of the positions from the man in the back watching windows to the diffuser himself are all very important and each hold their own worth.

The Hurt Locker is a thriller due to it’s action-packed plot and suspenseful scenarios, yet I believe it provides more value in the truths that it reveals to us through its depiction of combat in this war. The film puts the viewer into the shoes of an American soldier fighting in Iraq. The movie really emphasizes how the soldiers cannot be too careful. Anything could be an IED therefore, they don’t underestimate anyone. For example, James interacts with a young Iraqi boy he plays soccer with him and buys DVDs from him. At first James sees nothing wrong with him selling DVDs, then he begins to rouse the suspicion that the DVD merchant might be giving away the positions of soldiers. This is a good assumption that James made but turned out the DVDs were not giving away their positions.

Not only does this movie portray what it is like to fight on Iraqi soil, it also explores the mental state of the characters during the war. Referring back to James again, he deals with terrors and anxiety of war through an adrenaline rush. He is the bomb diffuser, he loves the rush that diffusing a bomb gives him. James keeps a part from each rig that he diffuses in a box under his bed. James’s way of coping with death and war is a head-on approach, he does not require the backup of his fellow soldiers rather he wants to do it all himself. When James is off duty he drinks to forget about the terrors that haunt him from the things he encounters in combat. This is a common way that soldiers cope with combat.

Another reason I give this film so much credibility in its sufficiency of depicting combat and a soldier’s struggles is because, even though James is so tough mentally, he too has a breaking point. We see James’s breaking point when he discovers a young boy’s mutilated body which he believes to be the boy that he has been interacting with. Up until this point in the movie James has assessed every bomb situation very calmly without any apparent fears. We now he encounters something that is not a part of his every job (diffusing) he is presented with a different situation. At first, James’s solution is to place charges on the body and blow it up, then he changes his mind and opens up the body, removes the bombs, and carries the body with him. James is mentally stable after diffusing literally hundreds of bombs but this one bomb defines his collapse. I believe this was a good thing to include in James’s character because after all, no one is going to endure war without any long-lasting effects. While The Hurt Locker is a thrilling movie, it holds more truth through it’s portrayal of combat and mental combat of a soldier. The movie covers what it is like on the battlefield all the way to the other end of the spectrum to what it is like after the war is over.

Logan Blain

Why do we go to War?

        War is a part of most every civilization's history. A reason for war in the stone age might have been over something as simple as a rich piece of land. Over time, the reasons for war have become much more complicated. The motives for every war is different but there are some that are very common. Even in the early A.D. Years, people were fighting over land because conquest was a common practice among early civilizations. Already, we can see how the reasons for a war have become slightly more complicated. From the early A.D. Period to post-modern times our reasons for going to war have still evolved and changed although some similarities still exist. Our human nature is hostile and vengeful under the right circumstances; one of the many reasons we go to war is to defend or seek revenge upon another force. Another reason to engage in war is to achieve a specific goal. The reasons that we go to war change between each war but they are all aroused by our natural tendencies to seek revenge on those who do us wrong and to pursue and achieve a goal.

        Not only in war, but in any situation, a human's tendency is to do back to someone what has been done to them. If you get punched by someone (most people) will punch back and this same principle can be applied on a larger scale which deals with whole countries and military forces, when focusing on the initial reasons for the war. There were many factors that played into the American intervention of World War II but the one that pushed Americans over the edge was the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The reason that I am focusing on this aspect of American intervention is because it is the one that applied to the tendency of human nature in which I am discussing. When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor the over-all American feeling was anger and in turn they wanted revenge. U.S. Entered the war on December 7, 1941 which was the same day as the bombing. The Japanese destroyed a piece of America's own and they were angry and wanted revenge, although this is not the only reason the U.S. entered the war, it was the spark that ignited the flame. It is an elementary concept but holds true in many instances concerning war. War essentially has the same plot as middle school fight: someone has hostile feelings towards another for any number of reasons, the hostile individual takes action and attacks the victim, the victim usually retaliates, thus starting a war. When Pearl Harbor was bombed and America wanted revenge on the Japanese, so they entered the war.

        Another reason that a country might enter or initiate a war would be to achieve a specific goal, these goals could include political, economic, or humanitarian characteristics. In the case of the Vietnam war America was trying to achieve the political goal of preventing the spread of communism. America believed that by helping South Vietnam fight North Vietnam they would prevent or limit the spread of communism throughout the world. So here we see that America is trying to achieve containment of communism and this is the primary reason for the U.S.'s intervention in Vietnam. In Black Hawk Down American's intervened in Somalia for humanitarian purposes. They were trying to help relieve the famine. Another example of the motive of achieving a goal is the Revolutionary war. The Revolutionary war was a Revolution against Britain, who at the time controlled America. The English parliament, which ruled America, taxed the colonists, which made them angry towards Britain. The American colonists got tired of being ruled by a foreign king and wanted independence and the result was a rebellion. After the war was won by the Americans, on July 4^th, 1776 a Declaration of Independence is written and the United States is born. 

        After looking chronologically at the motives for engaging in war, it is obvious how they have gotten more complex over time, yet the motive itself is nothing foreign to us as individuals. If human nature was different in that we weren't so quick, it brings about the question of how would war be different if we more passive in terms of war. In the example of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, it shows just how quick humans are, that is we wasted no time in joining a war to get revenge on the Japanese who attacked us. If our genetic m
ake-up had us as more passive beings, would we have as many wars? Would the world be more peaceful? Our non-passive tendencies also give us the characteristic that we create goals that we seek to achieve. In many of our U.S. Wars, the primary motive for entering is to obtain something set by the specific circumstance. Overall, fighting is part of a human's natural behavior.