The Hurt Locker

So I saw The Hurt Locker almost two weeks ago in New York, and it’s still with me. It’s an intense, bone-saw tremor of a movie that follows an Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) unit through Iraq in 2004, and it will leave you well spent by the closing credits. Katheryn Bigelow directs a movie that is so tight, it smells real.

That’s the easy part to explain. The hard part is why this movie is still in my head.

I’m a veteran. I served in the U.S. Army Reserves in the early/mid Nineties and got deployed to Haiti for Operation Restore, later, Uphold Democracy. Restore was the U.S. Military operation and Uphold was the U.N. peacekeeping mission of an almost decade long commitment. It was never a war, declared or otherwise. It was a deployment, which in military jargon means “go over there and do your job.” The Hurt Locker, like Jarhead effectively captures the feeling of being deployed. Of doing your job, over there.

Which is exactly what the characters are doing. Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie and Brian Geraghty could have easily played their parts as the “Renegade” the “Professional” and the “Youngster,” instead they just are. It’s probably best because archetypes rarely stray and these characters just borrow what they need, when needed, as do we all.

Haiti wasn’t a war but it was dangerous at times. We patrolled, came across urgent medical situations and secured perimeters. That was normal.

We chased bad guys (2x), ducked for cover (1x), fired warning shots (2x), were threatened by Voodoo priests, hiked for days in 98F- 98% humidity (1x), pausing every couple hours to stick an IV in our arms to hydrate (6 to 8x), repelled (1x), infiltrated and exfiltrated (1x). This was also normal because we trained for these situations.

And this is what deployment feels like. The job you are trained for is what you do. The men you trained with is who you are. Your leadership will give you the right order at the right time. All of this, training, buddies and leaders, will keep you safe.

None of these parts can be off. If they are, you lose trust. Without trust, unit effectiveness is gone. Without that, you are on your own. It’s a shitty feeling but it happens and there’s even training for this. Training to get things back to normal. But really, if it gets to this point, it’s understood that you are fucked.

And this is also what a deployment feels like. The abnormal situations that you don’t train for are what get to you. Abnormal during a deployment is making friends with the camp-rats, having a child named after you, worrying about the Intel Sergeant with the “WHITE POWER” tattoo across back, and the overwhelming and lovely generosity of desperately poor people.

And this too becomes normal. But when you live that definition of normal every day and come home again, that’s when things get scary. You don’t have a sidearm or a radio. You don’t plan your route to and from the grocery store. You don’t go with your entire unit to get a new driver’s license. And it’s at the point you pass your third McDonald’s and fifth Starbucks in two miles that you realize that this version of normal is bizarre.

And all you want to do is find normal. Maybe it’s in marriage and children. Maybe religion. Maybe sex, drugs and rock & roll. Maybe. Maybe not. One thing that’s for sure though, is this; The harder you try to define and control what normal is, it won’t the less it will be what you expect.

The Hurt Locker nails it that.

-

“To support the commander’s relationship with civil authorities and civilian populace, promote mission legitimacy and enhance military effectiveness.” -The Civil Affairs Mission Statement.