Quest for Honor

Opening this weekend: Quest for Honor, directed by Mary Ann Smothers Bruni

Synopsis from AllMovie:

In a small village in the Kurdistan region of Northern Iraq, a woman dressed in Western-style clothes — jeans and high heels — is found shot to death by the side of the road, and the preliminary investigation suggests that the victim knew her killers ... and that whoever pulled the trigger several times took no chances on the victim surviving. Before long, police have come to suspect that this was an "honor killing," in which a woman is murdered by a relative who believes she's brought shame in some way to the family name. "Honor killings" are still considered acceptable in many parts of the Middle East, and while they may be against the law, police rarely spend much time and energy on such cases. Filmmaker Mary Ann Smothers Bruni uses this murder as a springboard for examining the grim phenomena of "honor killings" in the documentary Quest For Honor, which features interviews with members of Sulaimaniyah's Women's Media and Education Center, police officers who investigate honor killings, family members of honor killing victims (and some suspected killers) and others who have become a part of this grim abuse of justice. Quest For Honor was an official selection at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival.

The film's website is here.

The Hurt Locker

Opening this weekend: The Hurt Locker, directed by Kathryn Bigelow

On the one hand, this big-budget action movie has the potential to become a huge summer hit. On the other hand, it is about the war in Iraq, about which, apparently no one wants to watch movies.

Synopsis from the film's website:

The Hurt Locker is a riveting, suspenseful portrait of the courage under fire of the military's unrecognized heroes: the technicians of a bomb squad who volunteer to challenge the odds and save lives doing one of the world's most dangerous jobs. Three members of the Army's elite Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) squad battle insurgents and one another as they search for and disarm a wave of roadside bombs on the streets of Baghdad—in order to try and make the city a safer place for Iraqis and Americans alike. Their mission is clear—protect and save—but it's anything but easy, as the margin of error when defusing a war-zone bomb is zero. This thrilling and heart-pounding look at the psychology of bomb technicians and the effects of risk and danger on the human psyche is a fictional tale inspired by real events by journalist and screenwriter Mark Boal, who was embedded with a special bomb unit in Iraq. In Iraq, it is soldier vernacular to speak of explosions as sending you to "the hurt locker."

The New York Times ran an article about Kathryn Bigelow a few days ago, and loved this movie.