The Hurt Locker: beyond adrenaline

It’s difficult to define borderlines. It’s one thing and something else all at once. For psychological conditions, the difficulty of understanding goes up several notches. Take for example an adrenaline junkie with a death wish. He likes the rush every time he goes to the extreme. But unlike those jumping off buildings and towers, only to scamper out of sight as soon as he lands because it’s illegal to jump off structures; this particular adrenaline junkie gets his fix legally and stays on the spot to enjoy the rush.

Staff Sergeant William James is one such extreme adrenaline junkie. He likes the rush and loathes the time when the excitement dies down. He gets his fixes by heading an explosives ordnance disposal team. He’s the one that dons a blast protective suit and disarms improvised explosive devices in the hostile streets of Iraq. Because of the high, he does it over and over again, even if it requires him to sign up for several deployments with different army companies rotating in either Iraq or Afghanistan.

The movie The Hurt Locker centers its story on James and his EOD team. The movie starts with an actual bomb disarming. The first scene is a feed coming from a robot approaching a suspected pile of rubbish. After the bomb is discovered, the bot is hurried back to carry back some more explosives to counter detonate the IED. The bot broke one of its wheels so the team leader, a staff sergeant, suited up to disarm the bomb himself. As the soldier approach the bomb a bystander holding a cell phone detonated it. Too late for any escape, the team leader died, the blast throwing him down to the ground. The blast scene is something else, the shockwave shook gravel on the ground and rust from a nearby wreck were blown off. It’s an introductory depiction of the unit’s unforgiving job in a brutal war.

James comes in as a replacement for the dead sergeant. The other members of the team, Sgt. Sanborn and Specialist Eldridge, are both expecting James to live up to their late Staff Sergeant’s kind of leadership. But James has a different play in mind. He’d rather go in than leave the bot to do the job for him. James’ first action with the team was just that. He suited up, popped up a covering smoke, and disarmed seven IEDs. Sanborn didn’t like that, they have specific roles to play and James isn’t a team player. In the next sequence, James removed his suit and headphones while disarming a car bomb, cutting him off from Sanborn and from any possible cover in case of an attack. After he successfully disarmed the bomb, Sanborn gave him a bleeding nose for removing the headphone.

So James likes to do stuff himself. That doesn’t do well with Sanborn. They’re a team and members cooperate with each other. Sanborn hated James’ guts. In one remote detonation, as they prepare to detonate a second bomb, James suddenly halted the blast because he left his gloves at the bomb location and he has to go back and get it. As he went, Sanborn was thinking aloud about how accidents happen, and how James may be in one of those ‘accidents’.

James is also into some fetish for the dangerous. After celebrating kills from a firefight, Sanborn discovered a cache of IED parts under James’ bunk. These are bits and pieces of ordnance that they’ve disarmed. James calls it “the stuff that almost killed me”.

They got themselves into another firefight, one that Sanborn and Eldridge are hesitant to get themselves into. “there are three platoons who could do this one for us”, Sanborn protested. But James simply pulled rank. Eldridge was almost taken prisoner and was shot on the leg by James during the rescue. As Eldridge is being lifted by a chopper to be taken off the hostile war, he curses James for being shot at just to get a fix. “My femur is broken into nine pieces” says Eldridge as he blames James.

In their last outing, a man was iron-strapped with timed explosives. James couldn’t free him even as he cuts loose one lock as there are several others more. He ran for cover a few seconds before detonation, but before he reach cover the bomb went off. James managed to turn towards the blast; the front of the suit is more protected than the back part. He was thrown to the ground, lays there for a moment, and then opens his helmet. His nose bleeding, he looks up the sky to see a kite flying overhead.

Driving back to barracks, Sanborn thinks deep about his future in the army. He can’t do what James do, for James wasn’t doing it because it’s his job. James was doing it for the high.

After their company rotated back to the US, James is seen doing normal things. Like going to the supermarket, taking care of the baby, and cleaning the gutter. But for James, this isn’t normal. So in the final sequence, James walks off a transport, and joins another company on a 365 day rotation in wherever his skills are needed. In the final scene James, donning the blast suit, walks towards a suspected IED.

The movie was directed by Kathryn Bigelow and written by Mark Boal. It had earned four best film awards in the Venice film festival. Jeremy Renner (SSgt. James) and Anthony Mackie (Sgt. Sanborn) are nominated in the Independent Spirit Awards for best actor and best supporting actor awards while Barry Ackroyd is nominated in the CAMERIMAGE for best cinematographer.

At first glance you could say this is a war movie. The way I see it it’s about James’ addiction with the war as a backdrop. If you’re a movie junkie who gets a special high on war movies, The Hurt Locker is your fix.

Writing again

It feels like waking up from a very long sleep and finding out that there's a black guy for an American president, Israel is pounding Palestine (again) for months now, that two heads of state have both experienced a shoe thrown at them, and that you missed the holidays. That's what this blog is going through right now, still training its eyes to an environment that it had forgotten about in its deep slumber.

We'll, I'm back writing again. Been very busy since my last post, though I never stopped gathering materials for this blog (and for my other blog). I'll try to salvage what little readership I have left and try to do it all over again.

Been very busy? Yeah....been doing several things, like going to my day job, and...doing my day job...

Mayon Volcano

It was already past dawn, the sun have already risen in the horizon, throwing its reflection into the sea. It was a bit blinding, but I managed to take a snapshot of the glowing orb. But even before the sun came out the pier was already crowded with buses and all sorts of vehicles queuing for the ferry ride to Catanduanes. So were we.

Just before the crew allowed us to board the boat the clouds thinned out of Mayon Volcano and showed her trademark slopes. Like taking cue from the sun, the volcano rose and showed its shape to the fullest. Of the many travels I made into Albay Province, this is one of the rarest moments to see the volcano clearly.

As we boarded the ferry, I can’t escape the temptation of taking some more shots of Mayon.

Thank you 'heads fans

The Eraserheads concert went through last Saturday and was cut short since they needed to rush Ely to the hospital (hope he'd be fine by now). Nope, wasn't anywhere near the venue (sigh). That's why I'm thanking the hordes of 'heads fans for posting videos on youtube. That's the next best thing I could get for the experience.

Ebook Freebie

While waiting for my kid at school I usually find reading a pleasant and fruitful way of spending time at the waiting area. So I managed to gather this collection of more than two dozen ebooks and book summaries that I wish to share with you. Every month I'm giving away a title and you can get your copy by sending me an email: glagamayo@yahoo.com. It's totally free, don't worry. The only thing I'll be asking from you is that you post a comment here about your thoughts on the material. Happy readings.

Chugging along the railroad

I was back in Brgy. Palasan Concepcion in Sariaya, Quezon when I chanced upon grade schoolers on their way home. The cheapest and fastest way to get to where they were going home to was to ride the skates.
These makeshift trolley runs along the railroad. These are made of wooden carts running on bearings. Many are powered by a gasoline motor about less than a horsepower. As you can see, a skate doesn't leave the "station" until its overflowing with passengers.
There's a driver who collects three pesos discounted student fare and five pesos for regular passengers. For this ride, the skates will ferry their passengers for about three kilometers. In a usual run, the skates can go all the way to Lucena City.The longest run that these skates made was from Sariaya to Los Baños, Laguna when a group of foreigners tried to ride the skate up to the University of the Philippines. Care to try one yourself?

Beijing Olympics Opening

Spectacular. That's one word to describe it. The Chinese government stopped at nothing to make everything work. Every Olympic host from Athens to Sidney, each city tried to present the best opening. Who could ever forget the bow and arrow lighting of the Olympic flame during the Barcelona games, or the pageantry displayed in LA.

The Chinese tried everything in there arsenal to create the spectacular that was the opening. Here's my take on the opening:
1. Synchronization - the two thousand and eight drum beaters and the the rest of the performers were dead on their cue. The choreographers found it necessary to let everyone wear ear pieces.
2. It was an occasion to remind the world of China's contribution to civilization, from fire works to paper, to kite flying.
3. Use of China's most abundant resource: its population. Just how many performers were there? Lets you remember those old footages of mass calisthenics.

But at the background were some problems encountered mostly by the international journalists. Two Japanese journalists were literally beaten up in Tienanmen Square even if they got permission from the government to report from that location. The Chinese Olympic Committee apologized for this but it's damage already done. Before that was the issue of internet access.

There's also that issue of air pollution. Haile Gebrselassie pulled out of the marathon because of Beijing's smog. Several American athletes arrived in Beijing wearing face masks for protection. Though the government tried to alleviate the situation but its now obvious their efforts failed.

Before writing this post, Katerina Emmons of the Czech Republic won the first gold medal of the Games in the women's ten meter air rifle competition.
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I was flipping the TV remote between the Olympic opening ceremonies and CNN because about three time zones away conflict is brewing between Russia and Georgia. Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili was on CNN explaining their view of Russia's support to South Ossetian separatists was a sign of aggression and calls on the international community to be aware of the situation. At this time, the conflict have spread across Georgia up to the capital Tbilisi.