YMMV / The Hurt Locker

• Anvilicious: The film starts with on-screen quote "The rush of battle is often a potent and lethal addiction, for war is a drug." Then everything except "war is a drug" fades out, in case the audience didn't realise that war is a drug.
• Award Snub: There were a few fans and bloggers who noted that Anthony Mackie was sadly overlooked in the Best Supporting Actor category.
• Awesome Music: Three of Ministry's songs were used in the film, but "Khyber Pass" certainly qualifies as the backdrop for the last scene in which James is re-enlisted and has another year of war to go through happily look forward to.
• Critical Dissonance: Film critics praised it as a thoroughly-realistic depiction of the Iraq War. Iraq War veterans found it absurdly unrealistic. Make of that what you will.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The scene where James equipped with a hidden pistol and civilian disguise, disappears from the base and enters an Iraqi home while seeking justice for Beckham, could easily spark to mind two incidents from the War in Afghanistan that happened a few years after the movie's release. Such as Bowe Bergdahl's desertion in 2009 and even more more so, Robert Bales going AWOL to kill 16 Afghan civilians in 2012.
• Ho Yay: The scene when the group is getting drunk and learning about each other, and Sanborn and James get into a shirtless fight that ends with James straddling Sanborn.
• It's Popular, Now It Sucks!: Its Oscar buzz brought it to a wider audience; which displeased many of its original fans.
• Moral Event Horizon: You never see the antagonists in this film, but any sympathy the audience might have for their cause disappears when they use a boy's corpse as a bomb, if not before.
  • And then crossed a second time when someone kidnaps a random civilian man, straps bombs to him, sets them on a timer, and then bolt it onto his body with reinforced steel locks, making it impossible to remove. He's then sent to the army base, where he desperately begs them to take it off, pleading the entire time that he has a family, but explodes before they can get the bomb off of him. Note also that because of the timer, he knew exactly when it was going to go off and could do nothing to save himself.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The death of Sgt. Thompson; he manages to escape the bomb, but the shockwave is still enough to kill him and splatter blood all over the inside of his EOD suit.
  • An unnamed boy was killed, had a bomb sloppily planted into him, and was left to rot.
• Retroactive Recognition: Anthony Mackie had been around for a while, but this was before his career really took off with Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: James' failure to find out anything about a boy's killers could be seen as this, but it's purposefully done for an exercise in futility. On top of everything, the boy was still alive and that was the body of a different kid.
• Vindicated by History: Summit only went to 500 theaters at it widest and the film grossed just $49 million worldwide in theaters (due to the studio having higher hopes for eventual flops such as Bandslam and Sorority Row). However due to extensive critical praise and strong word-of-mouth, the film became a moderate success on DVD, making back its modest $15 million budget twice over. It won several of the most prestigious Oscars as well, winning Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay, along with a nomination for Best Actor.

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