Box office bomb

I didn’t see the film when it was released, but Jason did, and his reaction to the movie was so visceral and angry that I avoided it. But I began to wonder. What made it so terrible? How is it possible that a movie so loved and lauded could be so hated at the same time? Art should make you react. It should move you. I needed to see it for myself, but I wanted a guide.

So I ask Jason to watch it with me. He rolls his eyes and agrees. I borrow a copy of the DVD and we sit down to watch it. Before we begin, I ask him to explain why he doesn’t like the movie.

“The Hurt Locker,” Jason says, “was not written for us. It was not produced or shot for us. It was shot for people back home who have a very John Wayne, cowboy-esque view, the Wild West view, of what goes on in Iraq. These are characters that you drummed up, from behind a desk, and then you put them through scenarios that you imagined about what it’s like ‘over there.’

“It’s insulting to see someone else’s interpretation of what we did. And then to have it win awards on top of it? The worst part of all it is, because service members come back and spread out, I don’t have any friends that were in. I have no one I can share the secret nod with and say, ‘Yeah, that movie sucks.’ Everyone loves the movie. But they’re sucking down fast food and thinking Gordon Ramsay made it.”

After that, I start the DVD. It takes us four hours.

We get two minutes in. Guy Pearce has not yet been liquified in his bomb suit before Jason pauses the DVD for the first time.

“We had to escort a major out,” he says. “Some of his captains and lieutenants, too. They wanted to go out and do an IED patrol with us. See what we do. So we went out to a water treatment facility. Previously, some insurgents had blown up one of the water lines that supplied the base, Al Asad, with fresh water. We discovered three or four IEDs set farther down the line from where they’d blown up their initial one. The major wanted to come out and see what was going on.

“So we did our job. Set up a cordon, pushed everyone back. Because you don’t know what’s underground. Until EOD clears it, until they say it’s okay, you have no idea what’s underneath your feet. So when you suspect a bomb, you cordon off the area and no one moves but EOD.

“Our major stepped out and said he wanted to see the bomb. He started walking towards it. So I saw these enlisted men, sergeants, screaming at officers to ‘Get the fuck back!’ Because they may kill all of us. Because they’re being stupid. They want to take a picture of the bomb and post it on their Facebook. That’s real life.

“So, in the movie, we see three EOD guys sitting around, talking about their dicks. It’s being treated like it’s a high school basketball game. What’s the point of that? When it comes to IEDs on the road, it’s deadly serious. You don’t know what’s around you.”

When a taxi breaks through the soldiers guarding the perimeter early in the film, Jason pauses again. “You see what the movie does? It depicts all the common soldiers as idiots. They can’t do their basic job. They can’t set up a proper cordon. They’re not the hero. They’re not the ultimate Billy Bad Ass. Everyone who isn’t William James is a bumblefuck. The movie wants you to believe that war isn’t a group effort. And that’s bullshit.”

After another hour of the movie and several more pauses to point out glaring inaccuracies, our hero William James is running through the streets of Baghdad trying to bring a child-killer to justice. Jason heaves a huge sigh. I look at him. He isn’t watching the movie any more. His mind is somewhere else.

“I think this ties into why I’m uncomfortable when people thank me for my service and call me a hero,” he says. There’s a look on his face. A look I have seen a hundred times. It’s the expression he wore when, at a party, someone finds out he was a Marine in Iraq and they shake his hand and thank him. It’s the expression my father wears when my mother prods him to talk about his experiences during the Vietnam War.

The expression is faraway and bewildered; they do not understand why people see them this way. They were doing a job. A job non-military people see as dangerous and noble. A job glamorized by movies like The Hurt Locker. A job more complicated that most of America can possibly understand. A job that deserves a more honest portrayal than The Hurt Locker gives it.