The Hot Button by David Poland

The Hot Button by David Poland

Share this post

The Hot Button by David Poland
The Hot Button by David Poland
TIFF – Day Six Is The Charm

TIFF – Day Six Is The Charm

David Poland's avatar
David Poland
Sep 09, 2008
∙ Paid

Share this post

The Hot Button by David Poland
The Hot Button by David Poland
TIFF – Day Six Is The Charm
Share

On the day known in the industry as the unofficial end of the Toronto International Film Festival, the festival felt like one of the great ones, if only for the day.
The best Iraq movie so far (closely nipping Nick Broomfield’s Battle For Haditha) and the best new American film at TIFF that I have seen this year is Kathryn Bigelow’s Hurt Locker, which really isn’t so much an Iraq War film as it is a war film that happens to be in Iraq. Mark Boal’s screenplay does what so many screenplays dealing with big subjects do not… it narrows the field down to a subject that can be contained by 2 hours, offering full, rich, human emotion on the playing field, which in this case is the Iraq War.
In many ways, Hurt Locker is like a third half of Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket. Bigelow, who does her best career work here, isn’t quite the magician that Kubrick was – and who is? – but she brings her own style to the proceedings and does not, almost surprisingly, ever cross over into excess style. (There i…

Keep reading with a 7-day free trial

Subscribe to The Hot Button by David Poland to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.

Already a paid subscriber? Sign in
© 2025 David Poland
Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice
Start writingGet the app
Substack is the home for great culture

Share