The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford

5 out of 5 Stars

I've seen this before, several times, on DVD and Blu-Ray, but I got a chance to go to a special screening of the film with director Andrew Dominik and Cinematographer Roger Deakins in attendance. They had a fantastic Q&A after the film. This movie is absolutely amazing. I can't recommend it highly enough.

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol

Tom Cruise is back for another go round as Ethan Hunt. It's hard for me to say too much about the family of MI movies (this one being the 4th), because I've only seen the first one, and that was over a decade ago (I remember not liking it that much). As for this one, it was alright. It seemed like a pretty run of the mill Hollywood action film. Supposedly Cruise did all of his own stunts for it, but, I don't really care about any of that stuff, so it doesn't really make me like it anymore. The one thing that I do want to give the MI team credit for, though, is the fact that they went a great route with shutting down the agency, and basically leaving these guys on their own with their wits and whatever else they could come up with. Other than that, I saw it once, it was alright, but I will probably never watch it again.

The Hurt Locker

Kathryn Bigelow has made a name for herself as being, basically, the only ultra successful female action film director. With a list of films to her credit that includes Near Dark, Point Break, and the critical and commercial misfire K-19, The Widowmaker, Bigelow has spent over twenty years building her name in the industry with films that have been successful, whether that be commercially, critically, or both. Bigelow returns to form, after some time off, with The Hurt Locker, a film about a small unit of soldiers whose job is to disarm bombs planted by terrorists in Iraq, circa 2004.

Jeremy Renner plays the death wish loving Sergeant Williams, with Anthony Mackie as Sanborn and Brian Geraghty as Eldridge, the junior officer who's ability to deal with the war is breaking down as Williams keeps putting them in more and more risk. Williams is one of these guys who has nothing to lose, or at least feels like he doesn't. He has a wife and newborn at home, but whenever he calls them, he refuses to talk, leaving his wife, on the other end, wondering if its him before he hangs up. Sanborn and Eldridge, after having seen their previous Sergeant die before their eyes, are not about to let Sanborn take them down with him.

The Hurt Locker is a singularity among most current war films, in that it doesn't really make a judgement call on whether our involvement in Iraq is good or bad. It simply follows a group of soldiers who have one of the most difficult, most intense jobs in the entire world, and how that affects who they are, both physically and mentally. It is tense, and when Bigelow tightens the strings, she doesn't let up. She obviously has the pedigree to make these kinds of films, but, by the time Hurt Locker is over, there is no second guessing.