A totally quirky film that demands more than it gives: The Taste of Tea

I finished watching "The Taste of Tea" and uttered the semi-cliche, there's two hours of my life I won't get back, but that isn't totally true: It's 2 hour and 20 minutes. Okay, that's too harsh. There are things I did like about this unusual Japanese film. I did, over the long course of it, come to understand this quirky, artistic family, in the mode of a Japanese version of a Wes Anderson or Noah Baumbach film - or most accurately of the family in Little Miss Sunshine, with the cute little girl and the sensitive young man and the eccentric grandfather and uncle. But it's very Japanese, a tough go for an American viewer - hard to know how many of the quirks are unique to this family and how many are endemic to Japanese culture (film set in rural Japan ca 2004). The Mother (and grandfather) and anime/manga artists, and the film uses anime and music video as a subtext - the crazy and colorful violence of the anime sequences that the quiet, demure, bespectacled mother designs are an "ironic" contrast to the slow, actually torpid pace of the family life and of this film - achingly long scenes watching cherry blossoms sway in the wind, long narratives, minutes spent watching characters move pieces in a game of Go. This occasionally broken up by some short action scenes (mobster gets beat up and buried alive), moments of really odd behavior (family enjoys group hypnotism), typical teenage angst (boy falls for girl who's far out of his league and pines away), and strange interludes (grandfather remembers his youth, uncle runs across former girlfriend and they chat awkwardly for maybe 5 minutes). A totally quirky film that some may love and has moments of great interest but demands, in my view, much more than it gives.

Great stuff throughout Brick City, but the series sometimes gets in its own way, trying to cover too much

Finished "Brick City," the 5-part sundance documentary on Newark and Cory Booker, leading up to 2008 election day - Obama's victory. I did really enjoy the series, especially because of my interst in and history with Newark, great to see such a terrific mayor as Cory Booker committed to that city, and you finish watching certainly hoping he will have a long and great career in public service. The Jayda story - the teenage mom who wants to help other young women stay away from gangs and trouble - plays out very well, too - she's likable and you hope for the best for her, against plenty of long odds. This episode brings in a whole new element, the battle for the Central Ward council seat, with Booker's candidate up against a local guy who thinks Booker has brought in too many outsiders to run Newark. Booker gets his clock cleaned. It's one of the unfortunate flaws of the series that there's just too much material and the directors founder as they shift from one story line to another. I continue to wish that they had been more selective and had let more scenes play out. The best scenes in this episode are the wonderful student assembly in which principal of Central High, Ras Baraka, speaks to the students about safety on the streets and his failure to protect them (there had been a shooting outside of the school), also some of the political council sessions in which Booker and aides discuss strategy in the council election. Trust your material, guys, in your next documentary, and don't screw up great scenes with a loud music soundtrack. Great stuff throughout Brick City, but the series sometimes gets in its own way.

Courts, Cops, and Bloods in Brick City

Jayda seems on the verge of going to prison on the four-year-old assault charge, and even though her tough-as-nails attorney tells her not to worry, how can she help it? It's hard to believe she'll get a fair shake, and we don't of course hear the story from the victim's point of view, so who knows? Seems terribly unfair, though, as Jayda, now pregnant, has come up from a childhood in which she was clearly a trouble-maker to a point where she is a true leader likely to have a positive effect on her community - if she can survive. Prison will do her no good. We'll see. This 4th episode of "Brick City" has considerably more information on Jayda and on her former crew, the Bloods, who lose one of their members to gunshot suicide. We also learn, through a lot of indirection, about a power struggle between the Director of Police McCarthy and the police chief, who has not been even a bit player in this documentary series to date. Though it's impossible to follow all the nuances of this struggle, the essence is that the chief gets kicked upstairs and Mayor Cory Booker comes down in support of his director, McCarthy. Valiantly, the filmmakers try to make a character of McCarthy, but he seems always very conscious of the camera and cautions about what he can truly reveal. Police rarely make for good documentary subjects, unfortunately, as they have learned on the job to watch everything they say and they rarely trust the media. So much great material in Brick City, but once again I wish the filmmakers had let it speak for itself instead of infusing the story with a background track and frenetic editing.

What gives a documentary film its integrity? : Brick City

I continue to like "Brick City" despite its flaws, especially episode 3, as we really get to like Jayda and continue to be in thrall to Corey Booker. The narrative has a little more focus in this episode, as we zone in on two crises: the delays in the construction of the new Central High School, and the budget crisis forcing across-the-board cuts in all agencies, including police, now struggling to keep down the murder rate. The filmmakers valiantly try to make Chief McCarthy the 3rd main character, but he seems not too willing to let them inside his head or to grant a lot of access outside of public appearances. Booker lets them go with him everywhere, but seems to have no private life. Jayda gives pretty complete access, which makes her a very winning and open character - struggling to make a life, and to help other young women, but with plenty of flaws and with a lot of pressures pushing her back to thug life. I notice that the filmmakers never actually interview any of the characters - they only observe - and I think that's great, and I wish, as I've said in the past two posts, that they'd brought that same integrity into the editing and production process because I think this series would feel much more true and real if it didn't have a musical score. That said, this 3rd episode is not quite as frantic in its editing as the first two, and a few scenes - the overnight for freshmen boys at Central, the meeting of the men's group against violence - are allowed to unfold a little, and these are highlights of this episode. There's a danger in having too much material and trying to jam it all in - some stuff has to fall by the wayside to let the best material bloom.

Cory Booker, Jayda are extremely likable, but frenetic editing gets in the way: Brick City

Second episode of "Brick City" much like the first - some things I loved about it and some that troubled me (a lot). The character of Jayda, the teenage mother who's left her gang (the Bloods) and speaks to high-school girls about getting their lives on track, is emerging as the strongest character in the series, very complex and likable, and I wish the filmmakers could be a little more, or a lot more, patient and let her character emerge slowly, let us get to see her at some length. But the style of this series consists of frenetic montage and frantic editing, as if 500 hours of material must be crowded into 4 hours of documentary. No, it mustn't. Some should be left on the floor. We never spent more than a few moments at any one scene, and some of them - Jayda's breakup with her boyfriend, her reunion with the gang, her release from detention - require much more. The frenetic pace is a little more suitable for the main character, Cory Booker. He remains incredibly likable and heroic - but the film catches him in public life only. Maybe he has no private life, or maybe it was out of bounds as a precondition, but it does seem that episode 2 added nothing to our knowledge of him from episode 1. He needs to be facing some sort of crisis to give the story an arc: he is trying to lower the murder rate, so in part we're watching the city as it enters the long, hot summer, and we do see a lot of the police chief, the 3rd main character in the series, but not sure that's enough to shape the story and Booker's role gets a little murky in episode 2. It needs a single element or crisis to help crystallize the plot and to bring his character into high relief.

I recommend Thomas Cobb's book, too : Crazy Heart

Finally saw "Crazy Heart," based on the novel Crazy Heart, by Thomas Cobb. (Let's give all writers the credit they deserve!) It's an entertaining, very well done movie - clearly it's Jeff Bridges's show in every way because the movie is entirely character-focused, and entirely on his character, everyone else is a foil. The book, too, was primarily about the character Bad Blake, his fall from grace and his struggle for redemption. The structure of the movie is a little tighter than the novel, eliminating many of the road stops and the side trip to LA to connect with his estranged son - and that's all to the good. I won't be giving anything away here in noting that the movie considerably softens the hard ending of the novel - Bad makes a serious run an sobriety, and he has a friendly reconciliation with his girlfriend (Jane? - Maggie Gyllenhall), though it's not the Hollywood ending that I'd feared - they don't get back together. Though Gyllenhall is pretty good in the part, her character is the weakness in the film, as she's not played as a single mom likely to fall hard for an obvious drunk and failure - she's far too cleancut and well-scrubbed and we never quite believe she would make such terrible decisions. A great strength of the film is the music - I hope the current edition of the book also comes with a CD - all sounding good, but, though I'm no expert on modern country, it seems that it's all in the 21st-century style, much closer to pop or blues, and not at all in the style of the late '80s, when the film is set (the book is set in the early '80s). Cobb's novel has lots of detail about the life of a road musician and about the c/w business, which the movie can't delve into, so if you want to go deeper into the life of Bad Blake I recommend the novel Crazy Heart, source of the movie Crazy Heart starring Jeff Bridges.

Newark is a strange and tragic city : Brick City

The Sundance series "Brick City" is pretty good, based on first episode, but not as good as it could be or ought to be, unless it picks up quickly. I am really interested in this topic and will watch it through no matter what - as an Old Newark hand and a big fan of Cory Booker. Newark is such a strange and tragic city and carries to many memories for me, so I've really looked forward to seeing this. So far, it is a very good portrait of Booker, but its attempt to tell the story of the city through several characters is not well established in the first episode - only one other character, the ex-gang member Jayda, comes to anywhere near the level of interest of Booker. The series seems a little controlled and selective, as if we're not quite getting the full story of Jayda (though I think her role will be bigger in the next episode) and we're certainly getting an unabashedly heroic view of Booker. OK, maybe he is a hero plain and simple - but at times this seems almost like a campaign video. It would help if the style were more simple and focused - few if any scenes are allowed to unfold and develop, as there's a great deal of snappy editing showing different Newark scenes, and maybe there's too much material on Booker and not enough on other aspects? Personally, I find the musical score to be a big mistake - again, making this series seem like an infomercial at times and less like a documentary, which it is. This technique defies the conventions of most contemporary documentaries, but with little overall benefit.

Why are the bad guys British in Fantastic Mr. Fox?

I guess kids would like "Fantastic Mr. Fox," but it's hard to tell, not being one or having one around. It's also highly possible that it's one of those movies adults think they like because they think kids would like it but kids actually don't. What can you say about it? Foxes are very cute, and all animal movies have an inherent cuteness - and this new generation of animal movies, using high-def film and puppetry more realistic and detailed than any Steiff of years ago is a wonder to behold. These films are obviously a lot of fun for the cast and crew, a few big name actors (Clooney and Streep in this one) having a bit of a lark, a day at work in which they can show up in sweats or pajamas, and a cast filled with a bunch of their pals along for the ride. (Mario Batelli plays an animal chef, having about one line.) All told, it's pretty thin gruel and I didn't really closely follow the plot or care to. The fox enlists some pals in a series of heists against the three meanest farmers in the world. The get away with their hi jinx for a while, but not forever, as one of the farmers holds one of the foxes prisons and they have to spring him free. Hey, it's not about plot - it's about concept, and there are a few good conceptual laughs: Clooney and Streep romancing as kids, Clooney trying to purchase a tree house, the beaver lawyer, the PG language ("what the cuss!") - little filips aimed at the adults in the house. All told, an okay movie that gets a few good laughs out of some pretty thin material. I know the source material (Roald Dahl) is British, but why does it appear to be set in the English countryside, with the mean farmers speaking in various British accents - but all the animals are American? Am I missing something?

Few series have been as uneven as The Pacific

The concluding part 10 of HBO's "The Pacific" contains no combat at all - which is a handicap from the start, as the combat scenes have been the great strength of the series. Part 10 is a rather cumbersome wrap-up of the return to home of the 3 Marines whom we've followed most closely, or actually two of them and the war widow of the 3rd. In broad strokes, we get a picture of the difficulties of assimilating to life at home after years of brutal combat. What we don't get is any strong, or even surprising, drama - though there is a fairly good scene in which Sledge breaks down in tear, unable to go hunting with his father (amazing that his father, a sensitive and caring physician, didn't pick this up). The episode ends with quick updates on the later lives of each of the characters, including a montage in which the photo of the actor morphs into a picture of the real-life Marines. Oddly, after watching all 10 parts, I still wasn't able to identify most of the Marines, neither by name or image, which shows the difficulty of taking on a project this broad and how badly the writers/creators failed at establishing characters. Oddly, to me the most interesting character was "Snafu." We learn nothing about his home life, but we see from the closing sequence that he was actually a black man who, unlike the others, had no contact with his fellow Marines till much later in life; for some reason, the series portrays him as of indeterminate race - and there are no black or Hispanic Marines portrayed at all. Was that accurate? Few series have been so uneven as this one - great strengths, but grievous shortcomings.

Strong characters, a dramatic arc, unity of action : The series needed more of this!

I would say that Part 9 of HBO's "The Pacific" is the best of the series by far, to date (Tim Van Patten, dir.). Why? It actually has both dramatic unity and the arc of a story. Virtually all of the other parts, for all their strengths, were literlly all over the map, trying to encompass too many characters doing too many different things, not all of them interesting to watch. The seens outside of the battle lines have been, for the most part, very poorly conceived, with dialogue a half-step above the daytime soaps. Part 9, however, takes place entirely during the battle and siege of Okinawa, and we center on two characters only, Sledge and Snafu - the only two, by the way, that we're truly getting to know over the course of the series. The battle scenes are consistently extraordinary, in this episode and in the others, and we experience almost viscerally the horrors and the fear that the Marines lived with every day, during the terrifying actions and the long inaction holed up in tropical mud. What happens in this part is that Sledge, by the time the invade Okinawa, is consumed with hatred for the Japanese, he mistreats a prisoner, he's on the edge of breakdown. During the battle, he and the very intriguing Snafu come across a destroyed village; they rescue a baby, see the suffering, Sledge is transformed, somewhat. Yes, a bit simplistic, but very well dramatized. The series needed more of this! You have to get to know the characters, watch them change and develop, watch the battlefield shape them. Too many characters come and go (and not just because some of them die in action), too few characters have distinct and defining personalities or characteristics. They experience the war, but we don't experience it through them, in a sense.

Great battle scenes, pedestrian writing : The Pacific

Part 8 of HBO's "The Pacific" continues the pattern well established in the first 7 parts of the series: absolutely stunning battle scenes, more frightening and visceral than just about anything you've seen on film or TV, but absolutely pedestrian writing and character development when the action stops. It's as if there are two writers, two directors - and I think that was the case for part 8. As to the plot, in this part Sgt. Basalone, the hero of Guadalcanal, asks for assignment back to the Pacific - surprise, surprise, we could see this coming 7 hours ago and have wondered why they wasted so much time with him selling war bonds, totally uninteresting. While at the training base, he falls in love with a woman Marine and they marry, walk on the beach, talk about kids, and so on. This s really material of the lowest order and can anyone doubt what they're setting us up for as Basalone disembarks for Iwo Jima? The IJ battle scenes, however, reach the high standard of the rest of this series - of course you have to compare them with the Eastwood IJ movies, but though much narrower in scope - we follow just one company and never see the overall battle strategy - the effect here is more immediate, as it's always from the Marine's POV. One interesting facet of part 8: we see for the first time the Marines in training, as Basalone leads a company at Camp Pendleton. That's a break with convention; I was surprised that we never saw the main characters go through any training, they just went right to war, and it's a surprise to see it so late in the series. We've seen this stuff before, e.g., Full Metal Jacket, but I always find the training interesting to watch for some reason - maybe because I know that's about as far as I'd have gotten.

A terrible movie on almost every level : Inglourious Basterds

It's tempting to say of "Inglourious Basterds" : unwatchable, and leave it at that. In a way it deserves nothing more, a terrible movie on almost every level. But it's probably worth explaining why it's so awful. Unbelievably, it was among the bloated list of 10 best pix Oscar nominees, possibly to counterbalance the hideous A Serious Man, which made Jews into weaklings and grotesques in a way that Hitler might have admired. So to offset it - see, we're not self-hating Jews! - the academy nominates Inglourious, in which that great Jew Brad Pitt leads a team of superhero, anti-Nazi vigilantes. Where to begin? A movie about a Jewish platoon that takes on a special mission in wartime Europe sounds like a good idea - and I think it was done years ago in the properly spelled version of this film. Here, it's preposterous from the get-go: who are these guys, why are they so special and powerful, how can they possibly roam through wartime Germany (or occupied France?) and attack German soldiers at will and with impunity? Word spreads up to the Fuhrer, who launches into a one of the already cliched screaming fits - done so well in Downfall and so poorly here. There's a long setup scene in which we see how horrible the Nazis are - gee, I never knew! - which I guess is meant to help us sympathize with Jews who'd beat Nazi soldiers to death with baseball bats. Yes, let's get everyone down to the same bestial level - no, that's an insult to animals - the same level, that's a great moral compass, isn't it? All the wit and charm that Tarantino once upon a time brought to his violent pictures - even the cartoonish and too-long Kill Bill was kind of fun - has in this one, degenerated into a delight in cruelty and torture and a loss of touch with anything that's human.

In a great series, every word and frame is essential

Part 6 of "The Pacific" plays to the strength of the series - most of it consumed by a battle scene, a group of marines has to get across an airfield and take the high ground above a Japanese fortification on a desert Pacific Island. Absolutely terrifying. I'm amazed that anyone could do it - the fear, the suffering (they have basically no water, limited supplies). And as with the best of this up-and-down series, you're right in there from the Marine combat point of view - everything's chaos, we have no idea of an overall battle plan, must less the politics of the war or the tactics of the Pacific theater. This series spares no expense of photography, editing, sound, art direction - all those so-called second-tier award categories. With the Spielberg-Hanks-HBO team behind it, you know it will have first-rate-plus production values, and it definitely does. Just don't expect any narrative, and don't expect much in the way of character development or for that matter dialogue other than blam, splat. This episode includes the new recruit, Private Sledge, on his first combat mission, so it's a way for us to feel the fear of a novice, and also the guy who's emerged as a main character, Leckie, who's bashed up again but survives - tho we learn nothing further about his life. It opens with a scene at Sledge's Alabama plantation-like home, where his Marine buddy, home on leave, visits his parents and says he's not worried about Sledge - an obvious white lie. This incident, typically, adds nothing to our understanding of the characters and their world. Compare with truly great serieses like David Simon's The Wire or the one about Iraq whose name I now recall as Generation Kill - and you'll see that every word, every frame of those is essential, whereas too many moments in The Pacific feel peripheral.

You're right there with them as they storm into battle : The Pacific

"The Pacific" moves along in its episodic way - part 5 is really quite good in some ways though quite mediocre in others. The good, and this is the strength of the whole series: the ability to convey the feeling of the terrors of combat, how amazingly scary it is, especially for the guys heading in for the first time, making a shore into gunfire and air attacks. You're right there with them, it's terrifying - totally seen from the fighting Marine's point of view. If they know what's happening over at hq, we never see it or learn of it - on the ground it feels like chaos and the pure will to survive. It's a great tribute to the brave soldiers - not that this is the first film or series ever to take on this challenge, obviously (you immediately compare it with Saving Private Ryan among WWII films and and # of Vietnam films as well). The weakness: it really is an episodic series, with little or know attempt at character development or narrative arc. As noted before, it almost seems as if a different team of writers worked on each part and nobody oversaw the whole project. In episode 5, yes, Private Leckie is back on the scene, but just as we were maybe beginning to know something about him and care about him, he's off to the side and we focus now on a new recruit, whom we'd seen for a few bits in earlier parts. Meanwhile, we're halfway through the series and the hero of the first battle, John Baselone (sp?), is now stateside selling war bonds - a totally pointless subplot. Similarly, there was a long interlude on leave in Melbourne, but no attempt to weave that into the characters' lives going forward.

Maybe, just maybe The Pacific is coming into focus by Part 4

After I've beat up on "The Pacific" for a few days running, I have to say that Part 4 was a pretty good episode - this one looking, in the first half, at the horrible conditions fighting in a Pacific rain forest and the 2nd half at the strange life at a military psychiatric hospital. The series is doing a good job presenting different aspects of the war - not just one battle scene after another. We can see how sometimes the worst horrors are after the battle, slogging through mud, constantly wet and hungry. Mainly, I think, these episodes get better because at last one character is coming into focus - PFC Bob Leckie. We started off with 5 main characters, maybe 6 counting a guy stateside, and one by one they've peeled off and now we're staying with Leckie, or so it seems - just as well because the others, to me, are entirely indistinct. Leckie himself isn't the most compelling character I've ever seen - and the scripting is kind of odd, each episode so different that it feels almost as if there's no guiding hand for the series. The previous episode was all about Leckie's relation with an Australian woman who basically (and improbably) dumped him, and this episode has not a word about her. But it helps, with a canvas this vast, to have a focus, to have one set of eyes through which to see the kaleidoscope of war. Some powerful scenes in the hospital, and a good confrontation between Leckie and his superior officer who's a bully. The series never even touches on the politics behind the war, and that's probably just as well - it's all seen from the soldier's viewpoint, brutal and limited.

People do not behave this way - except in the mind of a screenwriter : The Pacific

Episode 3 of "The Pacific" takes place during a brief leave for the Marine battalion as they recover in Melbourne. At least I didn't blow out the windows with this episode - no battle scenes at all. The dialogue picks up a bit, no doubt thanks to the contributions of George Pelacanos, who co-scripted the episode, but this remains a series in desperate search for a narrative. The main characters are kinda coming into focus, but it still remains maddeningly difficult to tell them apart. One, John (something), who was heroic on Guadalcanal and won a medal of honor, is being sent home to try to sell war bonds. I guess that's possible, but how can that help this series - a hero we were just getting to know and like. Meanwhile, Bob Lackey, the one who likes poetry and seems to have left a girlfriends back home (he met her at morning mass and pledged to write), meets an Australian girl and follows her home, where her stereotypical Greek mama and baba bring him into the household - almost as if they're presenting him as a gift to their daughter. Do they even care that he's very likely never to come back to Melbourne? That if he does he's likely to bring their daughter home to the States? Then to compound the improbabilities she dumps him abruptly, claiming that if he didn't return it would break her mother's heart. Huh? People do not behave this way except in the mind of a desperate screenwriter. I give the series credit for its lavish attention to period detail and for having the courage to do an entire episode without a scene of combat, but the series has not found its footing and seems less likely to do so with every episode.

A series at war with itself - The Pacific

The weather's warmer, the windows are open, and I hope we're not freaking out the neighbors because we've been watching "The Pacific" and I have a pretty good speaker system and there aren't too many TV shows louder than this one. The Pacific seems to be about experiencing the war from the soldier's point of view - you're right in there among the incredible machine-gun attacks, the aerial bombardments, the grenades - you can almost smell the gunpowder. The house shakes. If that's what you want, The Pacific is all right. But is it really a good series? Two episodes in, I've yet to be won over and am having my doubts. The characters (we follow 5 guys as the enter the Marines, but we know almost nothing about their backgrounds and they're kind of hard to tell apart, at least in the early going) just don't come alive, the dialogue is simplistic, and the episodes seem to fall into a pattern: every time a couple of Marines are sitting around gabbing, get ready because an attack's coming! Moreover, we learn nothing about the geopolitical forces of the war (we are strictly held to the Marine's point of view), and though they occasionally talk about battle strategy - Col. Puller gives attack orders - there's no way you can follow the battlefield movements (first two episodes are about Guadalcanal). Again, the series is honest in its intentions - we're just like one of the Marines, mystified by the greater forces around us - but for that to work the characters have to be much stronger. Compare with the HBO series on the invasion of Iraq to see how this can work. And, ugh, the swelling soundtrack, Hanks and Spielberg sentimentality and trumped-up patriotism, totally breaks the mood of grim realism - the series is at war with itself.

The Pacific theater in WWII in 10 easy pieces

Did you think HBO's "The Pacific" would be a special about the ocean? No, it's a war saga of grand ambition - too grand, probably. This Hanks-Spielberg-Van Patten epic is meant to cover the entire Pacific theater of World War II in 10 episodes. Can it? From evidence of the first episode: Not likely. Episode one establishes, more or less, the main characters, all bound for the Marines and Guadalcanal, in such quick strokes that it's very hard to distinguish them from one another and, to the extent that we can, they're nothing more than "types": the wealthy Southerner, the guy leaving his girlfriend behind, the working-class Italian, et al. Will we see them grow and change through the trials of war? No doubt, but we see very little about who they were before the war - we're in Guadalcanal within 20 minutes I think. Once there, has there been a recent war movie that has done a worse job in depicting life in combat? These guys look like they're in summer camp, laughing, joking, tromping through the jungle. It's a shock when bullets fly, and even more so when we see the beach littered with dead (Japanese) soldiers. How did this battle happen? Did I miss it? Were any Americans killed? This episode is very awkwardly paced and by the end I know nothing about the battle and little about the characters. I see that the goal of this series is, apparently, to tell the whole story from the POV of the soldiers - nothing about the war rooms, the generals, the home front - but then we have to know them, care about them, and believe in them. For comparison, see the great HBO five-part series on the invasion of Iraq as seen from one platoon.

Two-plus hours of complete engagement - The Hurt Locker

Finally saw "The Hurt Locker," a surprising, still, choice for Best Picture, atypical of most winners and probably the beneficiary of backlast against the blockbuster frontrunner, Avatar. Hurt Locker is really good if not quite great. On the plus, it's absolutely 2+ hours of complete tension and engagement, without a sense of exploitation, gratuitous violence, or video-game extravagance. It feels totally real, genuine, as if you're in the boots of the men on the ground in Iraq, in this case a three-man team of bomb-disposal experts. One scene or episode after another entirely holds you, and you're thinking how can she (Katherine [?] Bigelow) keep this up? How can she maintain not just the pace - that's relatively easy - but the tension and intensity? She does - an amazing case of directing (and editing) in that none of the scenes (except a domestic scene near the end) is typical of most movies, dialogue, stills, etc. - they're all in action, in motion, on the job, and for this job a lot of the tension involves not chases and explosions but stillness and silence. Terrific movie, in that respect. If it has a flaw, it's that, by the time you're done, the story line is pretty simple, even simplistic. Yes, it's about three soldiers and how the war affects each of them in different ways, and we do get to know them, a little, by seeing them in action. But we don't know any of them deeply, they don't open up and aren't meant to do so, and we don't really see them change - they are fixed types at the outset of the movie and at the end, still. The main character, James, is enigmatic, sometimes a total bastard and then, in one scene in particular, quite solicitous - I didn't really understand these shifts and the movie doesn't plumb to his depths. It doesn't need to, really. It's a nearly great movie, and it can't be all things - if it wallowed too much in the psyche of each character, it would ruin the intensity and pace and be just another war (or antiwar) film.