I don’t know what was more nerve wracking, watching the relentless tension of The Hurt Locker or seeing it in the company of a 21-year-old ROTC college senior who soon will be serving in the Army infantry God-only-knows-where. Definitely puts an entirely different spin on watching a war movie.
The Hurt Locker was just what I thought it would be: brief bits of bonding and character-establishing downtime in between intense scenes of bomb diffusing and sniper fights. It’s well directed, looks great and the acting is solid, especially Jeremy Renner as the renegade leader of a three-man army bomb squad. However, the film clocks in at over two hours and I felt it. I got a tad bored two-thirds of the way through, around about the time Sgt. James goes a little too far off the rails. His cliche return home and an unsurprising ending felt flat to me. The Hurt Locker failed to match my expectations, raised too high by stellar reviews and hype. Fans of the genre will no doubt love it.
2 Things @ Once 
The answer to your question is the latter…. Perhaps you should have seen “Julie and Julia,” since he’s headed to France before the infantry.