The Hurt Locker

This is the film that beat Avatar in most of the Oscar categories. No doubt Avatar suffered because of an "artistic backlash" against its huge commercial success, but does this film deserve its accolades on its own merits?

I would say that it is a good film, but whilst undoubtedly better than Avatar, it is not a classic in all honesty and I doubt if it will be widely remembered in years to come.

Its strengths are its superb production values as regards filming, its character development, the big moral questions it poses and its tenseness: any film about a bomb disposal team in Iraq would be missing something if it didn't manage to pick up on the intense stress of the job.

To me, it re-inforced the all important question about Tony Blair's war - what in heaven's name are we doing there?? It is all so utterly futile.

Its drawback is quite simple - there is little in the way of a storyline . Not unless you consider the question of whether the hero will make it alive to the end of the film to be a story.

A good war film though with an impeccable message - maybe Tony Blair might watch it and wonder what could possibly have possessed him?