Summary: I'm at 3/10 points because the story is not good, the characters are not approachable and the film is clearly too long, but I can still acknowledge that the pictures are really good and the actors play solidly.

Detailed: I went to see The Hurt Locker mainly because I heard a lot of positive things and the film came off very well with critics. Unfortunately, I personally can't agree with that.

The Hurt Locker tells the story of American soldiers in the Iraq war. That may sound exciting at first, but unfortunately it is not in the film. The story is rather flat and seems to me as if they had tried to portray the war situation as realistically as possible. Unfortunately, this is what the film ultimately suffers from. You can summarise the entire story in a few sentences and have retold the whole film. Unfortunately, there are no unpredictable plot lines here either. Once you have seen the first 10 minutes, you know exactly what will happen for the rest of the film.

The images are really strong, the setting is very oppressive and the camera tries to go new ways. Some people like this documentary-like, accompanying presentation, which is characterised by few changes of perspective and frequent zooming, while others do not. I was one of those who found this kind of camerawork unsettling, but that wasn't my biggest problem. For me, it was more about the fact that the film does not manage to entertain and, with a running time of over two hours, is clearly too long. My mind often wandered during the film, and that rarely happens to me in films.

The characters don't manage to carry the film either, because you simply don't care about them. They're not boring per se, but they don't grab you. That's also the problem why the tension doesn't work. The tension can't develop at all because you don't care whether the character dies or not.

The actors' performance is quite strong. Jeremy Renner, in particular, is a great actor again. I often like him anyway. The effects are pretty strong. The music is mostly rather unobtrusive.