Critical Dissonance: The movie is considered to be a realistic war movie by many critics, but not so much by the audience. Indeed, most former and current military personnel that have seen it, especially Iraq vets, complain of lack of realism. However, despite the obvious liberties taken with EOD policy, the movie captured the emotional experience of fighting in Iraq like no other.
Crowning Music of Awesome: 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.
It's Popular, Now It Sucks: Its Oscar buzz brought it to a wider audience; which displeased many of its original fans.
Fan Dumb / Hate Dumb: Quite a few of the fandom were repeatedly praising The Hurt Locker and Bigalow for making a "Tropeless Tale" (and ignoring its flaws) while picking apart the flaws of Avatar with no mercy. Ironically soon after the Oscars, many of these same fans began to trash and pick apart The Hurt Locker for all its worth, proving their worth as "True Movie Fans".
Hell Is That Noise: A bizarre musical chord[1] is used to enhance the Oh Crap moment when James discovers that the spare wire he found is attached to a daisy chain of a half-dozen or so more bombs.
Internet Backdraft: Debates on how accurate the movie was tend to spark some heated debates to say the least. Not to mention that a discussion on if The Hurt Locker really deserved Best Picture and if Avatar was snubbed by the Oscars will spark a big one.
Moral Event Horizon: You never see the antagonists in this film, but any sympathy the audience might have for their cause disappears when they kill Beckham use a boy's corpse so they can use his body 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 - Beckham an unnamed boy is killed, has a bomb sloppily planted into him, and left to rot.
Tear Jerker - Obviously, many moments in the film.
Vindicated by History: Summit only went to 500 theaters at it widest and the film grossed just $17 million in theaters (due to the studio having higher hopes for eventual flops such as Bandslam and Sorority Row). However due to positive word of mouth, the film became a huge hit on DVD. And it won some Oscars as well, including winning 3 of the main awards, Best Picture, Best Director & Best Original Screenplay, along with a nomination for Best Actor.
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