The Hurt Locker

Director: Kathryn Bigelow

Cast: Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty

Writer: Mark Boal

The Hurt Locker is the best film to be made on the conflict in Iraq and a modern masterwork of war movies.  Centered around the last 38 days of the Delta EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) squad’s tour of duty, the film takes us from one exhilaratingly terrifying situation to the next.  The EOD squad includes three men.  Staff Sgt. William James (Jeremy Renner), Sgt. J.T. Sanborn (Anthony Mackie), and Spec. Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty).

Sgt. Sanborn is the controlled veteran of the group; careful and responsible under fire; he, along with the contemplative and nervous Eldridge, struggle to control and understand their new team leader, James.  While to some James may seem cliche, the tough guy with a heart of gold, he is really a complex character who essentially turns that cliche on its’ head.  We watch James diffuse bombs with the precision and care of a technician who knows how good he really is.  All the while Bigelow uses her camera to showcase the chess-like match being played between terrorist and soldier.  James revels in the intensity of the challenge; in proving his expertise to the men in his company and the men trying to kill him.  In the early stages of the film James does have a compassionate relationship with an Iraqi kid, Beckham, who sells porno DVD’s; some may have the impulse to see this caring-nice-guy attitude as almost obligatory but by the end of the film we are left wondering if this relationship was truly caring, real, or compassionate.  James is an excellent character built from cliche material but Boal and Bigelow lift him from a graveyard of used parts and transform him into a character of shocking depth.  On the surface he is an entire character.  In almost any other film his character would stop there, tough guy, heart of gold.  But here he is given another dimension which threatens what we’ve come to know him as.   

While The Hurt Locker is, for all intents and purposes, non-stop action throughout, it is able to, because of a tight, brilliantly written script by Mark Boal, develop character through the action.  Each bomb and/or situation is a chance to uncover a layer of each character and a chance to understand the inner workings of the American soldier.  Within each of these set pieces lies a deep realization of the moral complications and psychological burden that accompanies a job ridden with tension and fear.  By the end of the film we feel as if we understand these soldiers and their jobs; we see their reactions to these situations, their use of sarcasm and humor to diffuse their own inner conflict, and the buried impulses of the hyper-masculine.  

Director Kathryn Bigelow knows how to stage an intense, tension ridden action scene as well as anyone.  She understands that in order for us to care, we must see the space between soldier and bomb.  Each set piece is held for maximum effect, creating a jarring realism, and a pain of uncertainty that is surely only a fragment, and that is being generous, of the pain that the real EOD soldiers must feel.  By the end of the film Bigelow is able to show us why this is, maybe, the scariest job in the Army, if not the most dangerous. 

The acting is universally excellent with great supporting performances from big names who enter the film and leave it at the right time.  While Geraghty and Mackie both deserve awards consideration for their performances, it is Renner who will win and rightfully so.  Renner gives such a stunningly honest and understated performance that it hurts to watch him.  He portrays the inner workings of the complex character, James, beautifully; supplying us with just enough spark to ignite a whirlwind of emotions.  

The Hurt Locker is almost detrimentally subtle.  The brilliance of the film can be easily overlooked.  It isn’t flashy in it’s precision, except for a few questionable editing choices.  It is perfectly able to capture the inner being of these soldiers through the devastating use of solid action.  It is never boring.  It never lets up.  It is easily one of the best action films I have ever seen.  It will almost certainly be studied and dissected in film schools for its’ directorial mastery and well as editorial prowess; and rightfully so.  While it may seem episodic, the film is better for it.  The Hurt Locker shows these men doing what they do on a normal basis, this is what their job entails, not chasing after one master-bomber.  The movie remains uniformly suspenseful during each set piece while the real “journey” of the film is our understanding of James, it is Eldridge and Sanborn’s as well.    

The genius of The Hurt Locker is how it is painfully suspenseful in its’ uncertainty while at its’ core speaking about something greater.  ”War is a drug”.  The quote from Chris Hedges opens the movie and it is applicable while astonishingly being simplistic.  War is James’ drug, bombs the fix, and adrenaline the rush; and yet, the box in which he keeps pieces of the devices he’s disarmed and the care he shows his fellow soldiers in crisis suggest a deeper human struggling with deeper issues.  What does war do to the American soldier?  What ramifications does an environment of suffering, fear, and uncertainty have on these heros?  In the film one soldier says to Eldridge (paraphrasing), “War can be fun.”  Can it?  Is it?

The movie is refreshingly apolitical but if it is making a statement on anything it is that in a time of war, in a time where the greatest hell maybe on earth, the Army needs men like James, no matter their reasons.  

I said earlier that The Hurt Locker is a modern masterwork of war movies.  It’s not.  It’s a modern masterwork period.

4 out of 4

Tyler