The Hurt Locker won Best Picture, so expectations were high. It was a disappointment. Why Renner was nominated for Best Actor, I'll never know. His performance was bland; typical of a CSI episode on TV. Steven Seagal could act circles around him. The film had its suspenseful moments, like will he get blown up or not? They milked this to the hilt. It should have been nominated for Queasiest Motion Picture. The plot was boring - just defusing bombs and dealing with snipers. The part where they faced a sniper in the desert was dumb. They spent the entire day looking at a stone fortification half a mile away. In reality, the soldiers would have simply called for an air strike and be done with it. The scene where Renner takes off and carjacks an Iraqi civilian to do justice on the streets of Baghdad at night was dumb, as was his decision to take his crew with him to look for the person who laid out an IED in narrow alleys in complete darkness. Renner's recklessness would never have been tolerated because by flagrantly violating rules, he put his life in jeopardy as well as others. In the end, the characters were cardboard cut outs and didn't seem real.
Review of The Hurt Locker
