Recently, I was chatting with a close friend of mine, who returned not too long ago from serving our country in Afghanistan. He saw my post about ‘Hurt Locker,’ and he went off. He said that the film “is the worst portrayal of Explosive Ordinance Disposal teams that [he’s] ever seen.” When I asked why, he said “they don’t just drive around alone like that and they sure as shit don’t drop all of their gear to dismantle a bomb.” Well it turns out that my friend is not the only serviceman to feel this way. Several active EOD serviceman have complained, saying that the main character is too “John Wayne like,” and his behavior would be akin to “a firefighter going into a building with a squirt bottle.” To make matters worse, it has been revealed that the military adviser for the film decided not to work with the filmmakers after the Army was informed that certain scenes were being filmed that were not in the original script. I suppose the Army did not want to be associated with a project that they did not have access to in its entirety. Probably a wise choice. The writer for the film is whining about artistic license. I certainly believe in an imagination, just not when you portray a film to be accurate and the audience is mislead. Especially with so important a topic.
