I can understand the effect of giving the audience the feeling of being there by manipulating the camera to shake and move as if it's a cameraman at a war zone but the excessive jitters, quick zoom in and out, thrashing all over made me feel sick, literally. I had to watch this movie in several sittings and limited segments because I was nauseated, felt very sick to the point that my eyes were hurting, having headaches. It was just too much. The only reason I persisted to keep watching until the end was mainly because the number of awards. Clearly I am wrong in my judgement of this movie when it has won so many awards.

Taking aside my discomfort in watching it, I came away still not sure why it garnered so many awards. I can sort of understand that this movie tries to convey what the war in Iraq was about, to give a perspective of the soldiers' feelings. However, it didn't give me much of a perspective of the Iraqis. There are just there a props to fulfill a narrative that they are dangerous and the Americans are there. I don't see the reasoning why they are there. They aren't really having a relationship with the locals aside from buying things from the local vendors that sell DVDs, etc. This is a pretty shallow movie in my view. Rather than making a movie like this one, perhaps they could have presented in more effectively in flashbacks with James dealing with life back home and flashing back to the various bomb deactivation missions he did so as to provide a stark comparison between life back home and in war. This movie could have been much better but instead falls flat.

If the movie was trying to make the audience feel for the characters, America's reasoning in its occupation of Iraq, unfortunately I didn't come away with that at all. I've watched many war movies and I enjoyed a lot of them but this one was in my view, just a waste of time. Even taking away the discomfort of the jittery camera shots and just reviewing the movie based on the plot, it was a huge disappointment for me.