Comparison Of Taxi And The Hurt Locker

Improved Essays
The films Taxi to the Dark Side and The Hurt Locker are two films that depict the military and war. Both are centered around the Iraq War, where the United States invaded parts of the Middle East. Both films attempt to describe life as a soldier and the requirements of military life in dangerous situations. While The Hurt Locker is designed as a thriller, Taxi to the Dark Side acts as a documentary. These contrasting genres offer differing views of life in the military during a recent military conflict.
The Hurt Locker provides a fictional view into the work of a bomb technician and his team. While the movie provides accurate details of the war and includes realistic imagery to recreate the site of war, it is dramatized in order to entertain.

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Roger Ebert, a reputable movie and art critic, wrote a review on the movie entitled The Hurt Locker. This movie dives into the war-ridden life of William James and his squadron during the Iraq war. William James, played by Jeremy Renner, is an Explosive Ordinance & Disposal (EOD) specialist who risks his life to disarm deadly home-made explosives. J.T. Sanborn and Owen Eldridge, played by Anthony Mackie and Brian Geraghty, are James’s eyes and ears over an active bomb site; Sanborn being the squad leader develops high animosity towards Williams; through the duration of the movie, the tension between them is apparent. The director, Kathryn Bigelow, uses this tension to build on how some soldiers act during war time.…

    • 623 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Some of these involve, the pain and suffering during the war, the empathy each army and the people in the army obtained, friendships being torn apart, and each side unwilling to see from the opponents’ point of view. This book revealed just how emotional and how much controversy there was, and would make you surprised how America was able to endure and get passed all of…

    • 773 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Saving Private Ryan presents an accurate portrayal of combat stress and PTSD symptoms caused by warfare, which is significant because it demonstrates the sudden and long term effects war can have on people, as well as how war can alter the mindset of veterans of the past and current…

    • 1685 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Great Essays

    The Hurt Locker showcases the experiences of a United States Army bomb squad stationed in Iraq after US invasion of foreign soil. On the surface, the film is ostensibly a story based on the actual experiences of a journalist embedded with US military forces in Iraq. If audiences choose to dig deeper, there are multiple meanings that can be drawn from the storyline. Its most noticeable theme is established immediately with the film’s opening quotation, “The rush of battle is a potent and often lethal addiction, for war is a drug.” Despite the fact that war is harsh and unpredictable, those involved become habituated to these realities, and often don't know how to live without them.…

    • 1439 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Superior Essays

    How do the authors of Catch-22 and Dr Strangelove use irony and black humour to illustrate the futility of war and criticise those in authority during war? Coming out of the Cold War era, Joseph Heller's Catch-22 and Stanley Kubrick's Dr Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb make scathing satire of war and politicians. Heller and Kubrick explore their ideas about the futility of war and those who have authority in war using irony and black humour.…

    • 1541 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Great Essays

    The Longest Day VS Saving Private Ryan Over the past few weeks we’ve watched several movies pertaining to different historical battles and wars that have changed our world over time. Two movies that we recently spent time watching were The Longest Day and Saving Private Ryan. Both of these films depicted D-Day which occurred during World War II. Throughout this essay I will compare and contrast the two films. Some of the differences include: the movies effects as well as their storylines.…

    • 1653 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Jacob Detampel Mrs.Gauthier American Studies Lit/Comp 11 Date: 1-4-16 Saving Private Ryan (1998) This movie was directed by Steven Spielberg, a very famous Director of all sorts of Hollywood movies. Saving Private Ryan focuses on the final stages of World War II. This film shows the D-day invasion, combat in towns, and combat in the countryside.…

    • 1430 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Catch 22 Inhumanity

    • 1738 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Catch 22 by Joseph Heller and Apocalypse Now by Francis Ford Coppola are often considered two of the finest examples of contemporary anti-war literature and cinema, despite neither being explicitly against the concept of war as such, but rather, both opposing the bureaucratic absurdity of war. Catch 22 follows the absurd struggle of a Bomber Captain John Yossarian as he attempts to escape the tyrannical irrationality of bureaucracy in the US air force during World War II. Conversely Apocalypse Now follows the conjoint literal and metaphorical journey of Captain Benjamin Willard (Martin Sheen) as he attempts to assassinate a rogue colonel (Marlon Brando) during the Vietnam War. Each work individually illustrates the psychological trauma war…

    • 1738 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Hurt Locker

    • 723 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Peter Rainer a film critic says it is “Unlike most war movies”. The Hurt Locker focuses on just a few soldiers. In most war movies the focus is on a broad group of people, helping this movie keep originality. He notes that the movie was impeccably done. It shows the random death reality in the streets of 2004 Baghdad.…

    • 723 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Annotated Bibliography: The Things They Carried By Tim O’Brien Thesis: In “The Things They Carried”, the author, Tim O’Brien argues that the emotional burdens of fear, grief, terror, love and cruelty reality about war hardens the soldiers, and the psychological effects that these soldiers will have to carry for the rest of their life. "Looking Back at the Vietnam War with Author, Veteran Tim O’Brien." PBS. PBS, n.d. Web.…

    • 817 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Dunkirk Movie Themes

    • 683 Words
    • 3 Pages

    This is not a war film, but rather a thriller, as the director has described it. In Dunkirk the…

    • 683 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    FILM ANALYSIS: FULL METAL JACKET War is a tragic, yet important, piece of history that people must be aware of. Having several documentations and recreations of these wars into films should give a much wider audience of different generations the privilege to learn about the pain and struggles that people went through. Based on the opening sequence of Full Metal Jacket (1987), I feel that the message Stanley Kubrick successfully attempts to display to the audience is that war affects people greatly and should be understood so that it will be taken seriously. In addition, I believe that Kubrick wishes to change the way people look at war in order to give proper sympathy and respect where respect is due. Although the opening sequence is only thirteen minutes as opposed to the whole…

    • 1522 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Vietnam war is well known in the world for its brutality. And there are an abundance of stories to this day about the war. One of these stories is called The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien, give his point of view of the war, as an American soldier. Similarly, another text about the war is called Salem, by Robert Butler, a Vietnamese soldier giving his point of view of the war. Both of these texts explore the ideas that killing someone isn’t easy, even in war, also that war impacts soldiers and people not only physical, but emotionally and psychologically, by both of their uses of juxtaposition and through the different characters.…

    • 653 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    It shows how these young men have been victimized by an ideology that some individuals still carry and believe. People do not realize what soldiers have to endure in battle. Additionally, it shows the remarkable connection that the soldiers have with one another. Soldiers fight for the same ideals and with the same passion for the sake of their land and glory. Of course, there is a price for this glory—destruction and loss of lives.…

    • 1393 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Hurt Locker Essay

    • 870 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Film acting at its core is designed to replicate the way we, humans, naturally behave to a certain degree. Certain films may feature characters more believable than others on their exterior, but an essential quality of nearly every protagonist is to be imperfect. Just as humans are flawed on an individual basis, characters in film have their own unique set of disadvantages. Because of this, we see a reflection of ourselves in the character as they are always looking to improve themselves or overcome a major conflict in some cases. A flawless protagonist leaves nothing to be accomplished, nothing to gain, and nothing to overcome.…

    • 870 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays