'War is a Drug': The Quote That Fooled Leftist Critics

Usually when I’m moved to write a searingly original piece for Big Hollywood, I do a quick search of the Internet to see if my thoughts might not really be as groundbreaking as I thought. More often than not, I come across an article that says exactly what I was trying to say, only more clearly and eloquently. I then post a link to it on Twitter with the caption “good read!” and I’m done.

Blogging is easy!

Such was the case with my analysis of The Hurt Locker. I loved the film. After watching it, however, the thing that bothered me was the quote at the beginning, “War is a drug.” In the end, it serves as the theme of the film, but I found it to be way off the mark, and not even supported by the film itself. To me, The Hurt Locker seemed to be clearly not about addiction, but about purpose. What would motivate someone to return to a horrific war zone, to face death and dismemberment on a daily basis? A sense of purpose. That is what motivates people, not “a rush.”

I set to writing. Then I read Walter Owen’s piece in Vanity Fair, who put it together better than I would have:

But the director of The Hurt Locker brings you close. Which makes all the more baffling the epigraph that fills the screen, a line of slipshod poesy by the respected war correspondent Chris Hedges: “The rush of battle is often a potent and lethal addiction, for war is a drug.” That might have served as profound insight in Avatar, but in The Hurt Locker it only raises the question of how a director who could conceive such a spare and unremitting movie could also fall for such facile hokum.

I love that. And I wish I said it, because I love using phrases like “facile hokum.” But it bears repeating: The Hurt Locker is a great film, but it’s stated theme is way off base. Did the director and writer really believe this? I often find myself watching movies and saying, “I love this! But these filmmakers don’t seem to know what this film is about!”

That, I believe, is not the case with The Hurt Locker. I think that Katherine Bigelow and Mark Boal knew exactly what film they were making, and they knew that the quote was facile hokum, too. So why open the film with it? O.K., here’s where I get to have an original thought: The quote is marketing. It is there to give reviewers permission to praise the film. Just think what would happen if they made the exact same film, but opened with a quote from, say, Walter Owen:

As long as men still feel they are nothing without a call to duty, they will look for a place in the world where they find themselves excellent at something. One of those places is, and has always been, battle.

Critics would have hated it. It does not buy into their worldview, that soldiers are dumb rednecks who are forced to fight for their country because of lack of education and economic opportunity. They are victims. They are addicts.

The Hurt Locker does not portray these men as victims, but the quote at the beginning gives the critics cover – “It’s not their choice- it’s an addiction. They can’t help themselves.” That explains everything, including the film’s almost universal (and deserved) praise.

So kudos to Bigelow and Boal. They not only made a very watchable film, they played the press and Academy voters like a fiddle, which is, for me, even more fun to watch.