To say that the scenes in this movie were "tactically unrealistic" wouldn't even begin to describe it. I imagine they probably had terribly frustrated military consultants on set. You could tell they tried, but the director was like, "Nah, let's have the three EOD guys split up alone and go chasing bad guys at night through city streets. People will love it!" And the military consultants probably just rolled their eyes.
(...)
But here's where the problems start. Because the script writers were, for lack of a better term, lazy, they couldn't formulate a story tying the adrenaline rush of combat to the actual job of your average EOD soldier in Iraq. So they decided instead to make a movie about an EOD/Ranger/sniper/commando/hero guy and his two sidekicks. Who apparently don't have access to radios. And who travel around Iraq by themselves. In fact, most of the scenes rely on oddly and unrealistically contrived situations to induce a stressful reaction from the audience.
And whether you're writing a screenplay or a book, this is a lazy technique. It's hard to create stress by developing a character's personality so intricately that the audience is actually gripped by a decision the character must make with regard to, say, suicide. On the other hand, it's easy to create stress by strapping a bomb to a guy, locking him in a metal cage/harness with multiple heavy-duty padlocks and placing a timer on it set to expire in two minutes.
(...)
So, without giving away too many scenes, let's just suffice it to say, in real life, EOD techs don't conduct dangerous missions as autonomous three-man teams without communications gear. They don't typically carjack Iraqi VCD sellers with a 9mm while wearing civilian clothes, either. While on Camp Victory. And even if they did, they wouldn't be driven off base by the Iraqi and dropped off at another Iraqi family's house, at which time they hop a wall, enter an unlocked door, get into an altercation, flee the scene, and run through an Iraqi city attempting to make it back to the base.
That typically doesn't happen. Another thing you'll rarely hear in combat is an EOD E-7 suggesting to two or three of his guys that they leave the scene of an explosion in an Iraqi city by saying: "C'mon, let's split up. We can cover more ground that way." But you'll hear it in The Hurt Locker.
(...)
Oh, and one last complaint: If you've already watched the movie and thought you were seeing things, yes, those were actually Vietnam-era UH-1 Huey helicopters they were using for the casualty evacuation scene.
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Originally Posted by termite
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It came out in December.
And, consistent with your uniform anti-intellectualism (which you mis label as anti-elitism).
